


Family Matters

by QuantamTheory1



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-27 02:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 27,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2674679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuantamTheory1/pseuds/QuantamTheory1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of vignettes about the residents of The Gallows and how they became a family. The serious, the demented and everything in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 'Life Lessons' made me love writing both Lord Death and Patty (something I never thought would happen!). I really want to explore the dynamic between the members of The Gallows family and how they've developed. I'm sure some of my facts aren't canon - please let me know if you spot a continuity error. I'd love to hear readers' ideas on the scenarios they'd enjoy seeing, too (or if they think I should continue this thing at all!)

Not many people had the guts to tell God to go fuck himself. Even fewer of those people were fifteen year old girls. Then again, Lord Death mused, what did he know about fifteen year old girls? Maybe they were all mouthy, substance-abusing, disrespectful little monsters. This particular specimen and her sister had been under his roof for less than two hours and the entire house was in turmoil. He'd finally cornered Elizabeth Thompson in the library and informed her in no uncertain terms that rehab was in her future.

She'd responded by telling him off in a heap, grabbing a bottle of his 62 year-old Dalmore scotch and swigging it like water. She glared at him with blue eyes that would have been lovely if they weren't so bloodshot.  Her pupils were mere pinpricks, and he wondered what on earth she was on. Out of all the criminals in New York, Kid couldn't have found a couple of _sober_ ones to bring home?  

"You can go fuck yourself!" Liz repeated, tossing her wild mane of dirty blonde hair, "You aren't taking my sister away from me!"

"Nobody is trying to separate you and your sister. You are both going in for medical testing and then into a work rehabilitation program until I know if I can trust either of you."  

Frankly, Death was almost more concerned about the little one, Patricia. Elizabeth was street-wise, smart-mouthed and liked her chemicals, but her twelve year-old sister seemed downright dangerous. She was the same age as his son, but ten times more terrifying. Lord Death had a few choice words he wanted to say to the usually dependable Kid, who had been banished to his room until this mess could be straightened out.

" _Work rehabilitation_?!?" Liz shrieked, "Your stupid son said we were going to be his personal weapons, and now you're trying to pull this shit on me? If he even _is_ your son. How come he looks like does and you look like...that?"

Lord Death sighed and dissolved his Reaper aspect.  Not something he did in front of most people, but the girl was high as a kite and probably wouldn't remember anyway.

"Better?" he asked.

She didn't bat an eyelash, "Well I guess you are his daddy after all." she drawled, putting poisonous emphasis on the 'daddy', "Where is the little bastard, anyway? He promises us the friggin' moon, drags us all the way out here to the middle of _nowhere_ , and then disappears. Typical guy."

She lifted the Scotch and took another healthy slug straight from the bottle.

"You don't drink good Scotch that way." Death grabbed the bottle out of her hand and stalked back to the liquor cabinet where he poured a couple of neat doubles.

"First lesson," he said, handing her a heavy-bottomed crystal glass etched with his skull emblem, "If you're going to do something, do it right."

Liz looked dumbfounded, "You tell me I have to get all clean and well-behaved before I'm allowed around your precious baby and then give me a glass of booze? What the hell is wrong with you? Like, it's only bad if I'm not drinking it out of a fancy-ass cup?"

"You already took it without asking. I just gave you something to put it in. And aren't "fancy ass" things the whole reason you agreed to come here? I sincerely doubt it's because you want to use your talents to help us promote order and peace in the world."

Lord Death thought she was going to throw the glass at him.  Liz _knew_ that she was.

"If you break that, you are going to be one very sorry young lady."

His voice was hard, and for the first time, Liz' bravado failed her.  She put the glass down and lit a cigarette to hide her fear. If there was one thing she knew about men, it was that you never let them see you scared.

"No smoking," he told her, "Kid's allergic."

Okay, even God being pissed off at her couldn't stop her from thinking _that_ was funny.

"He's supposed to be a bad-ass, son-of-God Reaper and smoke gives him the sniffles?" she giggled hysterically, shaking so hard she almost dropped the cigarette on the rug. Maybe she _should_ go ahead and drop it. Burn a hole right through the thing.  It was awfully expensive-looking and she was willing to be it wasn't a fake.  Serve them right, stupid-ass rich people looking down on her and telling her what to do...

"I sent Kid to take your souls, you know." Lord said conversationally, pausing to take a much-needed sip of his drink,  "Your crimes were pushing you toward becoming Kishin. Kid is convinced that you were only doing what you had to in order to survive.  Convinced enough to want you as personal weapons. Which, I might add, he actually has no need of, and I suspect he's being driven by, uh, _aesthetic_ motives. I'm humoring all three of you right now but there is a limit to what I'm going to put up with. And right now you're pushing that limit pretty hard."

He was standing in front of her, watching her antics impassively, and when Liz glanced up at him the laughter died on her lips. His yellow eyes were sort of glowing and Liz could see some kind of purple sparks coming off of him. She realized he wasn't fooling around; she'd been around danger enough to recognize it's crawling sensation on her skin. He really wouldn't hesitate to take her soul. and then what would happen to Patty?  They'd come here for Kid's wealth and she needed to stay alive so her sister could take advantage of it. She turned away and tossed the cigarette into the fireplace.

"Thank you." Lord Death said politely. The weird light went out of his eyes and the sparks stopped snapping around him.  Now he just looked...disappointed, and it made Liz feel worse than any amount of anger could have.  She'd pissed off a lot of people in her life, but nobody had ever bothered to be disappointed in her before.

"You're welcome." Liz held out her glass, "What do you want me to do with this?"

"Drink up." he replied, "But from this minute on there will be no drugs, no smoking, you will _ask_ if you want a drink, and there will be precious few times I say yes. You will meet the terms of your parole, and you will behave yourself, and _if_ you become my son's weapons you will act in a manner befitting that position. Can you manage that?"

Damn straight she could.  She wasn't going to let anything get between her and the good life that was just within her grasp. Money was safety, and Patty was going to be safe no matter what Liz had to do.

"Sure I can. No problem." she shrugged, trying act like she wasn't terrified.

"Well then," Lord Death clinked his glass against hers, "Here's to your future, Elizabeth."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I don't know if Kid really has allergies (probably not), but it cracked me up in chapter three of the manga/anime when they go into the pyramid and he was complaining because the dust made his eyes itch. It was sort of precious, so I ran with it, even though he is a Reaper.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll probably do a lot of time skips later on in this story, but the first three chapters, at least, will be continuous, or at least pretty close to Liz and Patty's introduction to life at the Gallows.  
> Thank you to everyone who read chapter one and is coming back for more. You are adored and appreciated! As always, if you have an idea or find an error, please let me know. I keep looking things up in the manga and on Nenena's excellent (and hilarious) live-blogging-while-translating archive, when I writing, but I'm not sure my timelines, facts and references are always correct.  
> I imagine Lord Death as the kind of guy who likes being a dad and loves his son, but is constantly working, distracted, single parent and has no clue how to deal with certain things. Also, he's a flaky goofball sometimes. Hope this comes across and that he doesn't seem like an uncaring bastard who hates dealing with his son. However, I can say from personal experience that sometimes you seriously don't want to deal with kids' weird crap. Especially of the "Why the hell did you do that?" variety!

Lord Death really couldn't afford to spend more of his day on domestic affairs, but he absolutely had to talk with his son, and with Sid Barrett. Talking to Sid was going to be much more enjoyable, so he went ahead and did that first. He _was_ on his way up to Kid, he rationalized, so he wasn't avoiding the unpleasant task before him; he was just being efficient by talking to Sid on the way _. Efficient_ , that was it.

"Listen," he said when his intelligence officer answered, "Can you send a couple of guards over here?  Probably need three shifts.  Kid brought two girls home and-"

Sid's laughter interrupted him.

"Isn't he a little young for that? He might need protection, but not the armed kind!"

"Can it, Sid. I've got a serious issue over here!" Lord  kept his voice mild, but he really kind of wanted to throw his cell phone down the stairs.

"Sorry, can't help joking when you make it so easy.  That's just the kind of guy I am."

Death stopped on the top step, "The guy you are is the kind who's going to set up a guard rotation for the west hallway on the second floor to keep a drug-addled street urchin and her mentally unstable sister from destroying the house or robbing it blind."

"I'm not even gonna ask."

"Good, You don't want to know." Lord Death paused for a moment before collapsing onto one of the spindly-legged sofas in the upstairs hall, "How do you rein Black Star in when he gets out of hand, Sid?"

"We don't.  Matter of fact, Nygus just called me and told me to get my ass home because the kid is literally climbing the walls. Running him around the block a couple of dozen times usually helps."

"I thought starting at the Academy would calm him down a little."

"Yeah, we did too, but all it's doing is making him obsessed with beating the crap out of all the other kids to prove he's really somebody."

"At least he's not obsessed with  _matching_. Kid is getting out of control," sighed the man who controlled life and death all over the world, "I had to have all the paintings put in the attic because they threw the symmetry of the house off.  And don't even me started on the cleaning thing."

He'd had to hire _another_ maid to keep up with Kid's growing need for order and cleanliness.  His latest freak was demanding dual paper holders in all the bathrooms so 'the toilets wouldn't be off balance'.  The housekeeper, who adored the boy, was worried sick because it was taking Kid two hours to eat his meals 'symmetrically' and he'd go into a fit of unstoppable hysterics when he couldn't manage it.

"He's getting worse, huh?" Sid was all sympathy.  Black Star didn't remember losing his family but he still rebelled against the knowledge of what they'd been and done. What he'd do if he not only remembered losing his mother, but had adored her...well, Sid didn't even want to think about that.  And then there was the way Sophie's illness had finally played out. No wonder Kid was a mess.

"Yeah. Things are really going to hell since I sent Marie out to Oceania. She was able to help him stay on track, but I didn't have a choice, Sid.  You know there just wasn't anybody else. I didn't have a fucking _choice_." Death dropped his head forward and pinched the bridge of his nose, "She suggested I put Kid into counseling, but he's going to be the next Lord.  I can't have it confirmed that he's not right in the head.  The rumors are bad enough. It makes me sick to say it, but he's just going to have to get through this."

"i hear you, man, I hear you. Nothing harder than not being able to help your own boy.  Speaking of which, I need to go handle mine or Nygus is going to slit both our throats.  Clay and Akane are on their way to the office;  I'll pull them off duty and send them over to handle the first shift."  
  
Lord Death sat up abruptly, "No, that's not necessary. Just send over a couple of enlisted men.  Big ones.  The scarier the better. I just need someone to make sure those girls stay in their rooms. Keep Clay and Akane on task.  If there's a witch running around town I want the filthy bitch caught _now_!"

"You got it." Sid assured his boss hastily, "We'll find out what's going on. Don't worry."  Nobody liked witches, but Lord Death was off the charts in the hatred department. Understandably, of course, after what the witches had done to his family. If anybody ever took Nygus away and screwed Black Star up they'd earn Sid's eternal hatred, too.

"Sorry.  Forgive me," Lord Death said, his voice sounding exhausted over the line, "It's been a long day. Thanks for everything."

"Never a problem."

"Give Nygus my best."

"Will do."

Lord Death ended the call and slumped back into his seat.  The phone dropped into his lap and he looked idly around the room. He finally registered the fact that all the furniture had been rearranged into mirror images along each wall and that, for some reason known only to Kid, a bijouterie table full of his mother's cameos was perched on the window seat. Lord Death was sure it had something to do with making the room even, or maybe Kid just didn't want to look at the cameos. Who knew. Sophie could have figured it all out in an instant, but she was gone and he had tables up in the air and delinquents in the house because of it. Should he put the table back down on the floor, or maybe just hide it away somewhere?  It wasn't like the room would look empty without it, even if it was a huge space. Come to think of it, why on earth _was_ this glorified landing the size of a living room? Maybe he should empty it and turn it into a media room to amuse those two girls or something....  
  
Realizing that he really _was_ stalling; putting off speaking with his own son, Lord Death rose tiredly to his feet.  For the twentieth time that day, he wished his wife could come back and help him deal with things like she used to. For the millionth time over the last two years he realized how much he'd relied on her for the parenting stuff. And for the very first time, he realized that he had every intention of keeping the two degenerate little gun-girls if it made his son happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As Nenena pointed out in one of her excellent commentaries, a timeline flaw in Soul Eater indicates that Sid was only about 12 when he rescued and adopted Black Star. I'm just gonna go ahead and ignore that and assume Sid was a little older when he died than he said he was. If you haven't read Soul Eater Not!, Clay and Akane are members of Sid's intelligence team and when they're not undercover pretending to be NOT students, they're helping him track down a witch in Death City.


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I sincerely hope this makes sense, because I've had to take an awful lot of NyQuil today. It should be against the law to get sick three days before Christmas!
> 
> Big hugs and thank yous to everyone who's been reading and commenting - I really, really appreciate it! If you have something you'd like to see worked into one of these vignettes, let me know and I'll see what I can do. And as always, if you spot any continuity errors, please let me know - I do my best to reference properly, but there's a LOT of Soul Eater to keep straight, and sometimes it contradicts itself;)
> 
> Going back through early chapters in the manga I was struck by how very adorably short Kid was drawn back then and had to mention it in this chapter. Because NyQuil, probably.

**Chapter Three**

Lord Death took a deep breath and rapped lightly on his son's door with the back of his knuckles.

"Please come in, Father." Even through three inches of solid wood, Death could hear the strain in his son's voice. He slowly turned the silver knob and passed through the dark, cavernous bedroom. A single lamp burned beyond the door to the attached study, throwing a pale rectangle on the ebony floorboards. Inside, Kid stood formally in front of his desk. He'd changed his suit, but even the freshly pressed fabric wasn't smooth enough to satisfy him and he picked nervously at his cuffs.

"I'm sorry for taking up so much of your day with all this trouble." he apologized, hanging his head. Lord Death wondered if the fourteen foot ceiling was responsible for making his son look so small, or if Kid really was, as Elizabeth had claimed, "a little shrimp". He  _was_  awfully small compared to her or her sister. Was he growing properly? Surely there had to be records somewhere that would indicate past growth rate. Sophie's office, maybe? But he was mentally wandering again, and sternly returned himself to the matter at hand.

"I've got them corralled in the last two rooms in the West wing." he began awkwardly, "Sid is sending over some people to keep an...eye on things."

Kid's lips tightened a little.

"To keep them from stealing, you mean." it wasn't a question.

Lord Death nodded, "Until we figure out how this is all going to work, they don't get the run of the house. Kiddo, I know you did what you thought was best but you have to admit this was a hell of a shock. This sort of thing just isn't like you."

"I dealt with the situation as I saw fit. You're always reminding me to do that; not to follow rules blindly because nothing is black and white. Except my miserable, asymmetric hair, of course. Why can't the stripes go all the way around? Yours do. I hate being so unbalanced-" Kid's hands slid into his hair and he started scratching at himself, one of the hardest of his tics to watch. His father reached out and grabbed the scrabbling hands, holding them tightly as knelt on the floor.

"Kid! Stop right there. We are  _not_ doing this right now!" Death's voice was sharper than he meant it to be but he just didn't have it in him to deal with one of Kid's meltdowns. Not tonight. Not ever, if he was really honest with himself.

Kid took a few shaky breaths, trying to pull himself back from the brink.

"They didn't deserve to die, Dad. They stole money to live on, they stole  _groceries_."

"They also stole cars and drugs and knocked off liquor stores. Not exactly necessities."

"Well, yes, but...I don't think they knew any better."

"And while we're on the subject of liquor and drugs, both of them are going to need some serious rehab. Then they're going into a probationary work program until I can really see what I'm dealing with."

"I'm sorry, Dad," Kid repeated, "But they're not kishin yet. 'Every person is responsible for the path they take', right? They deserve a chance to choose the right one, now."

"I just wish I was sure of your motivations. Encouraging those girls to move in a positive direction is a wonderful thing. Inviting them to be your personal weapons is a whole other story."

"I know I don't have to make my own weapon, but I want to know I'm capable of doing it myself. How else can I really understand the value of what our technicians and weapons go through to make a Death Scythe?"

Kid's eyes were starting to tear up, but Death couldn't tell if it was due to emotional stress or because he was being kept from the damned  _scratching_. Either way, it was pitiful.

"If that's the reason you're doing it, then I commend you. But I want you to really search your heart, Kiddo. You brought them here and now you're responsible for them.  _I'm_  responsible for them. They aren't just weapons to be used; they're living, breathing human beings with feelings and problems. A lot of problems, in their case. If you turned their lives upside down just because they  _match_ , you're doing them a huge disservice. And you will have utterly failed to be the kind of Reaper, and the kind of son, your mother and I always hoped you would be."

Kid's hands were now trembling fists and Lord Death had to tighten his grip to keep them from breaking free.

"I didn't...I'm not. I don't  _think_  I did." he stammered, "But I promise that I won't ever let them down. I know I've got problems and that you must be ashamed of me, but I won't ever think of them just as weapons. I promise!"

He dropped his chin, unwilling to let his father see the humiliated tears finally spill from his eyes.

"I'm not ashamed of you. I've never been ashamed of you." Lord Death could almost feel his heart cracking at the thought that his son had been keeping such painful ideas to himself. He let go of Kid's hands and gently rested his palms on the sides of the boy's pale face. Kid looked a little shocked by the contact and that was heart-wrenching as well. They'd become such strangers since Sophie had gone, and Death knew it was mostly his fault. He'd isolated himself with his grief, pretty much leaving his son to muddle through as best he could and take on the burden of his mother's work as well. He deserved a good kick in the ass, but the one person who would have given it to him wasn't around anymore.

"But the way I act sometimes...I know how bad it must look and-"

"You've been through a lot in the past couple of years, Kiddo. Don't think I don't know it. Things have been, uh, hard for both of us. You do the best you can, and it's plenty. I have never, ever been ashamed of you."

He pulled his son's head against his shoulder, almost melting when Kid's arms went around him and he felt the boy's hands fist in the back of his coat, just like they used to when he was little. He had to get better at this single parenting thing. He just had to.

"Tell you what," he said, pulling back, "Let's go downstairs and I'll have dinner with you."

"Really?"

"Yep." Lord Death climbed to his feet, "You've gotta be hungry; you did, uh,  _forcibly_  apprehend eleven members of that street gang to save Elizabeth and Patricia this morning. US Attorney Lynch says thank you, by the way."

Kid smiled and wiped his hand across his face. as he followed his father out into the hall. They hadn't even made it to the stairs when Death stopped with a little gasp. Five seconds later his phone rang shrilly, echoing along the hall. He picked up and listed, his frown deepening by the moment.

"I know. I'll be right there." his said tersely, ending the call. He whirled to face Kid, already distracted with a million thoughts, "I'm sorry Kid, but I have to go. There's been a terrible flood in Portugal. Lots of casualties."

"I felt it too, a little. There's heavy pre-kishin activity there right now, isn't there?" Nobody ever had to remind Kid to do his homework.

"Yes, and if we don't want one gorging himself into full kishin status, I've got to get Death Scythes on the ground to collect those poor souls. Go eat something and then get ready to go out. I'm going to need you there." He assumed his full Reaper aspect and summoned a mirror.

"I will." Kid said to his father's disappearing back. It didn't matter about dinner, there was work to be done. He lifted his chin, squared his shoulders, and headed downstairs, pausing to throw a glance at the entrance to the West hallway.

He would be everything he was supposed to be from now on. For humanity and for his father and for them.  _He would._


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure about this, but it popped into my head and wouldn't go away. I decided to skip all the stuff that took place during Liz and Patty's rehabilitation - that was pretty well explained in Soul Eater Not! so this takes place at the end of the events in that series.

Their first dinner as formal partners wasn't off to a good start. She was running late and she could hear Patty screaming all the way from the top of the stairs.

"Damn."  Liz hissed under her breath.

Why did her sister have to start trouble on their very first night back at The Gallows?  Things had been going so well. They'd helped the little NOT class girls from the cafe nail a witch, and three days later she and Patty were released from their rehab program by Kid's father. Apparently anybody who'd participate in a witch murder was fully rehabilitated in Lord Death's book.  This morning he'd moved them out of their halfway house and back into his home, but Liz knew that one wrong step could land her out on her ass.

She followed the hollering to the dining room, arriving just in time to hear Patty repeat her ultimatum.

"I am not going to eat this!"

Kid sat at the foot of an enormous table and Patty stood to his left, eyeing the plates on it suspiciously. A worried-looking maid hovered uneasily near a door at the back of the room.

"What's the problem?" Liz tried for a bright tone, but was struck a little dumb by the size of the room. Patty was either taking it in her stride or was too pissed off to notice it was bigger than the average Brooklyn apartment.

"The problem is that you're late, and Patty can't sit down until you do, or the balance of the table will be off." Kid replied, pointing to the chair on his right.

"I don't want to sit down! There's fried _lettuce_ for dinner!  Slimy fried lettuce with _white things on it_!" Patty screeched, jabbing her finger at the offending vegetable and giving it a mutinous glare.

Kid honestly couldn't see what the problem was. "It's just kale," he told Liz, feeling bewildered, "with minced garlic on it. It's good."

Liz closed her eyes and tried to work up some patience. Neither of them understood where the other was coming from, that's all. She didn't particularly feel like playing peacemaker, but as usual, it was all on her.

"Patty's never had kale, Kid."

"And I'm never going to, either! It's gross!" Patty kicked the table leg for emphasis and Kid jumped out of his chair. 

"Well maybe if she'd been raised properly she'd eat something other than junk food and know better than to put dents in the furniture!"  He snapped.  He was already at the breaking point because his silverware wasn't symmetrical.  Whoever set the table had forgotten that he needed two of everything, arranged in  mirror images on either side of his plate. Dealing with unbalanced table kicking was more than he could handle and he tried desperately to keep his hands from shaking. His new weapons knew he had issues with symmetry but he'd managed to keep himself under control in front of them so far. _Not on their first day as my partners, please..._

Now Liz was angry.  She'd done the best she damn well could to keep her sister fed, and this spoiled little shit was going to tell her she hadn't done a good enough job?

"Is that so?" she snapped, "Too bad we weren't raised in a freaking mansion with a jillion servants to wait on us hand and foot and make sure we ate three to five servings of vegetables a day!  I don't know how you're going to eat that crap either.  Look at it!  Those leaves are about as far from symmetrical as they can get."

The maid, sensing impending doom, ran for the housekeeper.

Kid looked down at his plate and felt his stomach roll.  She was right.  Not one of the glistening kale leaves was like the others and the bits of garlic weren't uniformly distributed.  Worse yet, there was no way to fix it.  Kale would always be disorderly.  Why hadn't he noticed it before?

"You're right!" he skittered away from the table and stood near the door beside Liz, practically hyperventilating, "I can't eat that garbage.  It's disgusting. Disgusting. Disgusting."

Shock zinged down Liz' spine as Kid slid down the doorframe and onto the floor, hugging himself and rocking.

"What the fuck?" she asked Patty, who was laughing her head off.

"Look!  You made him go crazy, sis!"  she giggled, "Just by saying kale isn't symmetrical!"

"Don't talk about it!" Kid screamed, bursting into tears, "It's disgusting. Awful, awful, disgusting, unbalanced, disgusting..."

The door at the back of the dining room opened and a somberly-dressed older woman bustled toward them.

"Oh, my dear," she sighed, kneeling beside Kid, "It's not as bad as all that.  Come on, let's get up off the floor."

Kid just rolled up into a ball and upped the wailing.  The housekeeper looked up at Liz.

"Meal times are hard for him," she sounded apologetic, but there was a hint of steel behind the words that warned Liz against making it any harder in the future.

"You mean this is _normal_?"  Liz thought hard, but couldn't remember a single instance when she'd seen Kid eat anything.  Not that she'd ever given him a chance to order anything when he came into the cafe to check on her and Patty; she'd been too busy throwing cups and silverware at him to ask if he was hungry. He _was_ awfully thin, come to think of it.

"I wouldn't call it normal," the woman replied tiredly, "But it isn't unusual. Why don't you and your sister sit down and eat before everything gets cold and I'll see what I can do with him."

That put an abrupt end to Patty's giggling fit. "I told you I'm not eating it!  He's right, it's disgusting!"

She got down on her hands and knees and crawled over to Kid, where she rocked and repeated "disgusting" with him in perfect rhythm. Obviously that was how you got out of eating yucky food around here, Patty thought, and it was kind of fun, too.  Relaxing, really.

The door at the rear of the room opened again, this time with a slam, and a tall woman in a chef's coat stalked in.  Her blonde hair stood up in spikes above glittering gray eyes and there was an enormous knife in one of her clenched fists. She was easily the angriest-looking person Liz had ever seen, and she had seen a _lot_ of angry people in her time.

"I have _had_ it with this!"  the woman's voice bounced off the cavernous ceiling and put all the other yelping to shame. Patty stopped in mid-rock and her mouth fell open.  Liz hurried over to put herself between the madwoman and her little sister.

"This is Nadine, " the housekeeper said calmly, "She's our chef."

"Nadine has a big fucking knife and she looks like she's gonna cut a bitch." Patty replied, peeking over Liz' shoulder, "Should we shoot her?"

"Go right ahead!" the chef hollered, "It would be better than working here!  And now I hear I've got _two_ maniacs to deal with."

She turned steely eyes on Liz, "What about you?  Do you have any dietary issues that make you fall out of your chair and cry?"  She had some kind of accent, but Liz couldn't figure out exactly what. Nor did she care to try at the moment.

"No.  And don't call my sister a maniac. You should totally talk; you're the one screaming like a goddamn lunatic!"

The housekeeper got up and disappeared into the hall, leaving them to their fate. The chef advanced and Liz tapped Patty's arm three times in quick succession; their unspoken signal for transformation.  The familiar weight of the gun in her hand gave Liz all the confidence she needed. So what if they got thrown out?  It was better than getting slashed to ribbons by an unhinged cook.

"Gun trumps knife, bitch." she snarled, "Stay back."

Nadine gave a short, barking laugh.  "You've got balls.  I like you. I'm not going to hurt you, I'm here to deal with him."  she stuck her thumb out at Kid, who was still senseless on the floor.

"You're not going to hurt him, either."

"I'm not going to _stab_ him, I'm going to make him _eat._ I was chopping up chocolate when you little brats started up...just forgot to put the knife down."  she dropped it on a sideboard and Patty relaxed back into human form.

"Oooh! There's chocolate? Can I have some?"

"Later, if you don't cause any more trouble." Nadine replied, bending over Kid.

The housekeeper ushered Lord Death into the room just in time to see his son picked up by the scruff of the neck and shoved bodily back into his chair. Kid barely seemed to notice the manhandling; he was too busy trying not to look at the scary kale.

"Now you look here, little mister," the chef grabbed Kid's chin and turned his face up to hers, "You are going to sit here, and you are going to eat this and you are going to stop acting like something that just escaped from the circus, do you understand me?"  she shook him for emphasis and his head banged against the back of the chair.

Patty objected to that. "You said you weren't going to hurt him. He's our Reaper, not yours. He's kind of broken, but he's still ours and you leave him alone!"

"Well, it looks like dinner's turned into an interesting event!' Lord Death said cheerfully, and Nadine turned on him like a wild animal.

"Interesting? You call this interesting?  You don't deal with this every night. I have to use a ruler to make sure the  green beans are all the same length. I have to put mashed potatoes into a mold so they're circular. When's the last time you even ate in here?  You lock yourself up in that office and don't give a damn what goes on in the rest of this place." She gave Kid another shake, "This poor little bastard is such a mess that he's practically starving himself and you haven't even noticed!"

If Kid minded being called a poor little bastard, he didn't show it. He looked defeated and miserable, and nobody really seemed to care about anything but the inconvenience of it all. The thought of him eating all alone every night in an enormous room meant for parties, and laughing  and _life_ made Liz' heart go out to him. She took the knife off the sideboard and grabbed Kid's plate. Everybody looked on in silence as she carefully slit the kale into even little strips.

"Here," she said, giving the plate back, "It's symmetrical now. I can't do anything about the garlic, so you'll just have to deal. You're not allowed to be pickier than Patty. You're just _not_."

"Thank you Liz." Kid had gratitude written all over his face, and Liz resisted the urge to wipe the tears off his face. It didn't seem proper somehow. Wasn't her job, anyway.

"It's fine," she said gruffly, handing him a napkin, "Sit down and _eat_ , Patty. Right now."

"You too." Nadine said firmly, shoving Lord Death into the chair beside Patty's, "You're going to sit down and eat with these kids and act like a bloody parent for one night. Gretchen, you sit on the other side of the big girl so the table's balanced and we don't have another meltdown. I'll send Jennifer out with more place settings and Kid's extra silverware and everybody had _better_ behave while I'm gone!"

The housekeeper sat down uncertainly next to Liz, who didn't care for being called "the big girl", but wasn't going to argue with a pissed off Amazon; especially one who'd just taken her big-assed knife back.

Across the table, Patty had decided not to push fate, or her sister, any longer and was chewing with gusto. She gleefully elbowed Lord Death, who sat beside her in shell-shocked silence.

"Kid was right!" she told him with her mouth full of kale, "It's yummy.  Can I have some more?"

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick little mood piece that attempts to showcase Liz' insecurity and the strain in Lord Death's relationship with his son. Next up will be a couple of chapters that start to soften Liz' heart.

Liz marched into the library, eyes blazing, and determined to hide her panic under a facade of anger.

"Where the hell is my stuff?" she demanded, skidding to a halt in front of the Tudor refectory table in the center of the room.

"Why are you asking me?" Kid asked with a distinct lack of interest. They'd just returned from a reap, he had an examination in conflict resolution the next day, and he had to be in the Death Room in an hour to work on Reaper combat arts with his father. He really didn't have time to worry about earrings, or whatever else Liz might have misplaced. 

Liz' already-riled temper kicked up a notch.  The little bastard couldn't even be bothered to look up from whatever he was reading.  Some stupid thing about boring shit, she was sure. She leaned over and yanked the book away from him.

"I'm _talking_ to you!" she snarled, tossing the it on the floor, "This is important!"

Kid folded his hands on top of the table and looked at her calmly.

"Well, actually, you're _yelling_ at me, but whatever." he said pleasantly, "Did you ask Patty if she knows the whereabouts of whatever it is you're looking for?"

"Her stuff is missing too."

"I'm sorry to be rude, but I'm busy and this isn't my problem.  If you'd put things away when you're done with them-"

Liz cut him off by slamming her hands down on the desktop and leaning right into his face.

"Listen, you little shit, I just went upstairs and _all_ my stuff is gone. Where is it? Did you go on some kind of cleaning tirade? I told you to stay out of my room."

"You never stay out of mine!"

"Because you hide in there all the time."  

Liz adopted a superior tone to hide the fear she had no intention of showing. Her brown satchel was missing. The one she'd packed in case she and Patty had to leave quick. All the cash she'd been able to save from her work release and her allowance, clothes, and some things from around the house she could get big bucks for in a certain Flatbush Avenue pawn shop back in Brooklyn. Patty was settling into life at The Gallows, but Liz refused to let herself become so complacent. Any minute this high-class house of cards could come tumbling down and she was going to be ready when it did.

"I don't know what you've lost, but I don't have it." Kid eyed her suspiciously, "What would I do with a bunch of girl's things, anyway?"

"Who the hell knows?  Something creepy, probably."

Now Kid was getting pissy, too. "What are you accusing me of?"

"You're capable of just about anything when you're having one of your fits."

"I do not have fits!" Kid yelled, charging to his feet.

Liz  grinned evilly at him and deliberately tucked a thick strand of hair behind her left ear.  Just the left ear. She'd use symmetry to blackmail the information out of him if she had to, and she'd enjoy every minute of it. Now that she knew about Kid's freaky issues with cleanliness and order, she had a button she could push anytime she wanted to get him under control.  Control was power, and power was safety.  Everyone knew that.

Kid's eye immediately began to twitch.

"Your hair isn't even.  Do the other side."

"Nope."

"Liz, I'm serious. You're all asymmetrical.  Do the other side!"

"Nope."

" _Do the other side_!"

"I thought you didn't have fits?"

Liz' self-satisfied gloating was cut short when Kid jumped over the top of the desk at her.

"Fix it!" he shrieked, desperately trying to tuck back the hair on the right side of her head. One of his rings got caught in the long strands and she yelped in pain when he tried to yank it loose. Infuriated, she grabbed his bangs and scrubbed her palm over them, sending the soft black and white strands skyward.

"There!  Go fix your own stupid hair!"

Kid's stomach lurched and he flailed at her hand with his free one. Now his hands _and_ his hair were asymmetrical. He had to fix it.  He had to fix it _now_ , even if that meant cutting a chunk of Liz' hair off to get his hand loose.  Wait, he couldn't do that.  Then it would be all uneven and he'd have to look at her and it would be _awful_.

"Guess wha..." Lord Death appeared in the door, his happy grin and cheerful words snuffed out by the sight of Liz and Kid tearing each other's hair out by the roots.

 _One day_ , he thought, _I'd like to get through one day without fights or beatings or emotional breakdowns._ He was beginning to truly appreciate the fact that he and Sophie had stopped at one child, and that, until his mother left, that one child had been so easy to raise.

"Kid," he sighed, "What are you doing?"

"I was studying conflict resolution, but."

His father cut him off, "Well, you'd better study a little harder.  You're doing it wrong."

"Why do you always assume everything is my fault?  She came in here and yelled at me and made her hair asymmetrical _on purpose_ and now my ring is stuck and I couldn't let go of her idiot head if I tried!"

Liz turned her head toward the door as much as she could.

"Yeah, well he took my stuff.  Everything in my room is missing!"

Lord Death hurried over with a guilt-stricken face.

"I'm afraid this is all a misunderstanding," he announced, untangling them, "I know you just got back and I thought I could catch you before you went upstairs."

"So you could tell us you're kicking us out?"  She felt the ring slide out of her hair and stepped away from the two Reapers. Kid immediately clawed at his head, trying to put himself back in order.

Death was confused. "Why would I do that?

Liz moved toward the door, ready to run, "Well, our rooms are empty."

"I had your things moved back to the end of the west wing, to those rooms you stayed in the first couple of nights you were here," he saw Liz opening her mouth to say something nasty and held up a finger, "Those suites up front we moved you and Patty into are pretty bland.  They've always been used for guests and I thought you might want to do something with them.  You know, make them your own.  It was supposed to be a surprise."

"So we're staying here?"

"Of course."

"And you're giving our rooms a makeover?"

"Yes.  I hired that new decorator everyone's into right now. I keep forgetting his name. The one with the bright red hair and the stupid ties?"

Liz' eyes got so wide he thought they might pop out of her head.

"No fucking way!" she squealed, practically jumping up and down.

Lord Death smiled at her, "He's in the dining room looking at furniture catalogs with Patty right now. I told him he could do whatever you want as long as he stops short of knocking out walls. Why don't you go find some pretty things?  Or ugly things, or whatever you kids are into these days." 

"Omigod! Thank you!!!"  without thinking, Liz dashed over and gave him a rib creaking hug that almost knocked his breath out, "You're so awesome!!!"

"You're welcome."  he patted her back and his grin widened as she dashed out the door, still squealing with delight.

The grin died when he turned back to his son, who was still kneeling on top of the table fussing with his hair.

"Here,"  Death said, taking a comb from his inside breast pocket, "look at me."

He smoothed the boy's hair and felt him droop as the tension left his little body.  It saddened him to realize it was the first time he'd touched his son in over a week, and that the relief Kid was exhibiting came not from his father's hands, but from the simple fact of being neat again. He wished he could make Kid's problems go away with a treat like the one he'd just given the girls, but those days were long gone.   

"Getting kind of long in the back. You need a haircut."

It was easier to talk about haircuts than it was to ask what was going on inside Kid's head. Especially when he couldn't do anything about it.

"I like it this way."

It was easier to stick his bottom lip out and act grouchy than it was to ask why his father didn't pay more attention to him.  Especially when it wouldn't change anything.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Super fluffy fluff inspired by a PM exchange with densekohai. Patty hasn't made much of an appearance yet, but that's going to change in the next two chapters. This one is light and silly, but tries to explain Patty's and Lord Death's unique perspectives on the world. Next chapter is also Patty-driven but will be much more serious. Thank you so very much for reading and reviewing!

Even God needs a night off sometimes. Lord Death shut down all but five of his senses and sighed in relief as the pressure of policing the world went away.  To paraphrase Wordsworth, he thought,  the world really _was_ too much with him. Once in a while a guy needed a break from seven billion needy humans, and he probably ought to take one more often.

It was a cool, rainy evening; perfect for relaxing in his favorite armchair, with Dickens and a snifter of brandy for company.  The house was quiet, and Death luxuriated in the silence for a moment before opening   _A Tale of Two Cities_.

Then he heard the sniffle.

He glanced around the room, didn't see anything and was about to return to his book when he heard it again. Definitely a sniffle.  Someone was in the room with him and that person either had a cold or was crying.  In his house, he could be pretty sure it was the latter. He probably knew who it was, too.

"Kid?"

There was no answer and he refused to fire his soul perception up.  It would only lure him back to work, and it occasionally amused him to experience world as humans did. Not something he'd want a steady diet of, but it was interesting in small doses.  Careful listening led him to one of the sleek Chesterfield sofas at the far end of the living room. He switched on the lamp beside it, knelt on the plush black seat and peered over the sofa's back.  Patty had managed to squeeze herself between it and the wall. Her knees were scrunched up to her chest and her face was resting on top of them, covered by her tousled blonde hair.  A crumpled paper lay on the floor at her feet.

"Heya Patty.  What'cha you doing down there?"  

Patty jumped and looked up with startled, wet eyes.

"Sitting." she replied sullenly, wiping her nose on her sleeve. Death waited for more information, but none came. 

"Are you hiding?" Perhaps he was interrupting a game of hide and seek?

"No."

"Are you stuck?" maybe something had gone horribly wrong and she'd been pinned there for hours. Who knew?

"No.  I'm just sad."

That was  a multiple-word sentence, at least. He seemed to be making progress.

"Do  you want to be sad out here with me?"

"No."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Maaaaybe."

Lord Death though that over for a minute, then shrugged and pulled the sofa out just far enough to sit behind it with her. She was so shocked she stopped crying.

"Wow," she sniffled, "I didn't think grownups did stuff like this."

"You said you wanted to talk, and you said you didn't want to come out, so I thought I'd come in. Besides, I've never been back here."

"Me either."

"Well, now that we're both here, would you like to tell me what's bothering you?"

Patty pursed her lips and considered his request. She wasn't quite sure she trusted this. In her experience grownups either caused your crying or they didn't care about it one way or the other.  They sure didn't get down on the floor with you and talk in nice voices.  Then again, Kid's dad was different from just about any grownup she'd ever met. Maybe it was safe to confide in him.  If nothing else, he could probably tell her if she was right. She took a wobbly breath and blurted,

"I'm stupid."

Lord Death frowned.

"Who told you that?"

Patty shrugged.

"Well, whoever said it wasn't being very nice. Who was it? Kid? Liz? Your tutor?"  Lord Death clenched  'A Tale of Two Cities' until his knuckles turned white. The psych evaluations he'd had done when Liz and Patty arrived concluded that the youngest Thompson sister had some developmental issues; not surprising given the life she'd led.*  Lord Death had sighed inwardly when he saw her PSC and DP-3 scores and realized he now had two socio-emotionally impaired children living under his roof. 

"No.  Nobody needed to say it, I just know." misery flooded through Patty and her eyes filled again, "I'm supposed to have this page full of math problems done by tomorrow and I can't do them!  Why do I have to go to school anyway?"

She burst into fresh tears  while Lord Death looked on helplessly.  He had no idea what to do with own son most of the time, let alone a little girl he didn't know very well and who reveled in violent behavior. What on earth would Marie do in this situation?  What would Sophie have done before she....well, when she was capable of sympathy?

"Uh, would you, um, like a hug?" It really was unbecoming for Death to be so unsure of himself, but there you had it.

"Uh-huh!"  she threw herself against him and he patted her awkwardly. After she'd cried herself into the snuffly hiccup stage, he sat her up and looked gravely at her.

"You're not stupid, Patty."

"Yes I am! I-"

"You've had different experiences than a lot of kids your age.  You haven't gone to school as much as some of them, but you know a lot of things that they don't."

"Like what?"

Lord Death wracked his brain trying to come up with something better than "shoot up a convenience store" or "kick someone's ass really well".

"You know how to take care of yourself and the people you care about." he said finally, "You have street smarts, and a lot of people don't have that."

He took out his handkerchief and carefully wiped her eyes.

"But I need regular smarts!" she told him, "Liz and Kid are way ahead of me."

"Kid has been going to school since he was very, very young. Liz has gone to school more than you have, so her tutor is working on some harder stuff with her.  I hired Mr. Martin to help you catch up and he'll keep working with you until you do."

"Mr. Martin is a jackass.  I hate that rat fucker!" Patty said defiantly, giving Lord Death a look that dared him to challenge her. She was upset and looking for a fight.  He decided not to give her one.

"Beat him at his own game.  Learn the math, get a good grade on it and show him you're not stupid. Don't let the rat fuckers get you down." Lord Death made a mental note to give poor Mr. Martin a raise.

Patty cried, "You said rat fucker!" and went into a fit of stomach-clutching hysterics. When she calmed herself, she handed him the crumpled paper and a pink mechanical pencil with bunnies on it.

"Can you help me with it?"

He gave the page a quick scan.  It was pretty basic stuff; he thought he could handle it.

"Sure I will," he told her, "but we have to go sit down at the table where there's some light."

"Okey-dokey!" all of Patty's good humor was restored, "But can we go back behind the couch later? We could put a blanket over it and make a fort. I've seen on TV about making forts but I've never done it."

Lord Death patted her head, "It'll be a first for both of us."

He stood up, and then helped Patty to her feet.  She eyed the book he'd tucked under his arm.

"That's a big book.  Are you going to read the whole thing?"

"That's the plan."

"What's it about?"

"Personal sacrifice, redemption and the French Revolution."

"What's the French Revolution?"

"The people of France overthrew the King and set up a new way of running their country.  There was a long fight, and a lot of people got their heads cut off."

"A lot of _heads_ got cut off?  That sounds so awesome! Could you read it to me?"

The child's bloodthirstiness was unsettling, but that was no reason to deny her exposure to good literature. If decapitation set her on the road to reading, so be it.

"Sure, why not?"

An hour later, with twenty-six math  problems successfully completed, Lord Death  found himself sitting on a pillow behind the couch with a blanket over his head and Patty leaning on his arm. She had a little flashlight and pointed it at the open book in his hands.

"Okay, start!"

Lord Death cleared his throat, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

"And was it?" Patty interrupted, "Was it the best and the worst at the same time?"  He gave her a sad sort of smile and she wondered what it meant. His arm tightened around her.

"Yes it was, Patty.  For me it was."

"Did you get to cut off some of the heads?" she asked excitedly.

"Uh, no.  That was the worst of times part.  But I met Kid's mama then so it also made it the best."

"Kid's got a mother? Where is she now? How come I've never met her?"

"Well, she, uh-"

"Dad?" Kid's face appeared at the edge of the makeshift tent with shock and disapproval written all over it, "What are you _doing_ back here?"

"Reading  'A Tale of Two Cities' in a blanket fort, of course. You want to come in?" 

There was a twinkle in his father's eye that Kid hadn't seen in a very long while. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been on the receiving end of such a look, nor had his father taken a night off in recent memory. A whole evening off and he was spending it on the floor behind a sofa. With Patty.  What a horrible, undignified combination.

"No, I don't.  I've already read it. Twice. And _don't_ _talk_ about Maman to her." Kid pressed his lips together until nothing remained but an angry-looking line.

"Aw, com'on Kid.  It'll be more fun if you're here." Patty laughed and held out her hands to him.

"It will?" the idea that he might make anything _more_ fun felt pretty foreign to Kid.

 "And we won't talk about your mom if it makes you feel bad." Patty promised.

"It's almost eight o clock," Kid scratched his head nervously, "I always go to bed at eight o' clock."

"Com'on, Kiddo, it's only seven-fifteen.  Live a little," Lord Death tried to keep a jovial tone even though Kid was doing his best to kill it, "I'll tell you what.  I'll give you my watch.  You hold it and keep an eye on the time, and we'll quit at seven forty-five so  you and Patty to get to bed by eight." he patted the floorboards beside him encouragingly.

"I suppose I could," Kid looked uncertain, as if the whole scheme was terribly dangerous and they'd all come to a bad end. He gingerly inched his way under the  blanket and took his father's heavy gold pocket watch. Patty tipped the flashlight so the clock face was illuminated along with the book. Kid kept his eyes fastened on it, watching intently as it softly ticked away the too-short minutes filled with peace and his father's voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *STORY NOTE* If you completed a PSC inventory for Patty she'd score somewhere around a 36. The upper-limit indicator for socio-emotional impairment in 12-16 year olds is a 28. Please note that that doesn't make her developmentally delayed - just that genetics, experience or a combination keep her from responding to some situations in the expected manner. Kid's OCD and other anxiety disorders can also fall under this category. As always, if you have more information about this than I do, I'd love your help!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is all traumatic emo and everybody's freaking out. I hate over-the-top drama, but I felt it would take something *really* severe to move the Thompsons, Liz in particular, from wary, distrustful contempt toward actually caring about Kid. I also like writing Patty's absolute lack of boundaries, so she gets to be the catalyst for she and Liz learning some deeply personal things about Kid.

Patty loved Saturday mornings. There were always pancakes for breakfast, and after they were eaten she could do whatever she wanted all day long. What she wanted today was to wake Kid up and make him take her out on his skateboard again. Liz said Patty would get killed riding on it, but everything scared Liz these days. Patty wondered why her sister, who used to be so brave, was such a 'fraidy cat all of a sudden. She didn't waste too much time puzzling over it though; she needed to think of a good way to make Kid get out of bed. The housekeeper said Kid had a lot of get up and go, but that it took a while for the getting up part to happen. Patty had found that poking him in the forehead or pulling on his long eyelashes helped a lot.

She kicked off her slippers, carefully opened the door to Kid's room, and entered at a dead run. Her feet were loud on the wooden floor, but Patty was fast and there was no way he'd get out of the way in time if he heard her. She landed in the middle of the huge bed and yelled "Get up!" but Kid wasn't there. Patty eyed his clock suspiciously, checking to make sure that it wasn't later than she'd thought. Nope, she was right, which meant it was unusually early for Kid to have woken up all by himself. But he had, and missing her chance to scare him annoyed her.

She flopped onto her back in the middle of the bed and stretched her arms and legs out. It was so big she couldn't touch the edges of the mattress . Probably even Liz couldn't do it. She wondered why Kid needed such a big bed. Maybe he fell out at night otherwise? No matter how big it was, Patty thought her bed was much nicer. Hers had a whole canopy instead of half of one, and the wood was painted pink. Plus Kid didn't have lace on his curtains, or roses on his quilt. He didn't have a single stuffed animal, either, even though he'd given her one; a yellow kitten. Now that she had a place to keep stuffed animals and allowance money to spend, she planned to have an _army_ of them. Maybe a whole separate _room_ full. If the house could have an entire room just for storing silver, extra stuffed animal space didn't seem out of the question.

But that could wait for another day. Right now she needed her pancakes and the promise of a skateboard ride immediately afterward. Getting out of the big bed took some scootching but she finally got her feet on the floor. She peeked into Kid's study, thinking maybe he was in there reading the papers or doing his homework, and just ignoring her. He did that sometimes. He also did homework on the weekends, and Patty thought that pretty much proved Liz' conjecture that he was completely insane.

Kid wasn't in the study, or in his closet, so Patty trotted across the room and listened at the bathroom door. She could hear water running; mystery solved.

"Kid, can we go out on Beelzebub after breakfast?" she asked through the door. There was no answer, so she tried repeating the question a little louder. When he still didn't reply, she growled impatiently and opened the bathroom door. He was in the shower and couldn't hear her over the water running from all those shower heads he had. Until they'd moved to The Gallows, Patty had never seen a shower with more than one. They made getting clean look like fun, but they were too loud. She'd have to stick her head inside if she wanted him to hear her, but then her nightie would get soaked. It was a new one, with a purple bow on it, and she liked it an awful lot. It would be a shame to get it all wet and yucky. Plus if she did she'd have to change, which was out of the question because on weekends she was allowed to have breakfast in her PJs. Patty yanked the gown over her head without hesitation, tossed it aside, and pulled the glass door open.

"Kid! can we go for a-"

She more than made up for not scaring him earlier. He whirled around, yellow eyes wide under a cap of soapy hair. He gave a shocked little squeak and clapped his hands over his eyes. Which meant he couldn't see her, but she could see him. He wasn't okay with that. He wasn't okay with that at _all_.

"What are you doing? Get out! _Get out, get out, get out_!" he screeched, trying to cover his eyes and his body at the same time. The last woman to see him bathing had been his mother, or maybe his nanny; either way it had been a long time and Kid wanted to keep it that way.

"You couldn't hear me. I want you to-"

"GET OUT!" Kid tried to shove her back out the door and Patty banged her head on the wall. She _hated_ it when people hit her, and instant, red-hot anger boiled over. She'd learned not to let someone get away with hitting her; if she did, they usually didn't stop.

"Don't you push me!" she snarled, punching him on the side of the face. She'd been aiming for his nose, but all the soap and water made everything so damned slippery. He staggered backward and she continued her assault. She knew you never give the other guy a chance to recover in a fight. _Keep on hitting, watch his arms, go for the head and the crotch._ All the sprayers and knobs came in handy; there were lots and lots of places to bang his head against.

Kid was trying to cover up and claw the shampoo out of his eyes at the same time. He could have knocked her out with one good smack, but then he'd have to move his hands. And he couldn't use his Reaper strength against an unarmed opponent, could he? Especially not a naked girl. There had to be some sort of special rule against that.

Patty bashed his forehead against the edge of the tiled shower seat and the entire world disappeared for a minute. When he forced his eyes open, he saw blood spattered against the white tile. He grabbed at his temple and his hand came away crimson. Red against white, running brightly down the drain. His stomach lurched and suddenly, he couldn't breathe.

He'd already had a bad morning. The nightmare that had woken him was still gnawing on his mind; a white dress, blood and pain. He curled up, trying to hunch away from Patty's anger. Anger, blood, white tile, pain. Blood. Pain. Blood never came out of white things. It would fill in all those little crevasses in the grout between the tiles. He could to scrub it with a wire brush and it still wouldn't go away. He looked at his hands. There was blood under his fingernails and he couldn't stand that. Couldn't stand it. He just _couldn't_.

Patty hit him in the head again.

"Stop hurting me!" he screamed. It wasn't like any screaming Patty had heard before. It was hoarse and shaky and creepy-sounding. She stepped back, awed by the damage she'd done. There was an _awful_ lot of blood. She should probably stop hitting him and see how bad he was hurt. She turned off the water and tried to look at his forehead but he wouldn't let her.

"Com'on Kid. Lemme help!" she put her hands on his face, but that just made everything worse.

"Don't touch me! Don't hurt me!" he looked at her, but not like he was seeing her, and it was like he couldn't get enough air. He was shaking and acting so weird that it scared her. Liz had told her to act nice, and she'd blown it. Her sister would be mad, but she needed help.

"I'll be right back!" she promised Kid, who was trapped in his own private hell and couldn't have cared less. Dripping water, Patty ran as far into the hall as she dared

"Liz! Liz! LIZ!" she screamed, reaching out with her voice and her soul as loudly as she could. Then she hustled back to the shower and tried to help Kid some more, still calling for Liz. Maybe if she squeezed his head she could sort of push all the blood back in...

Liz had just started toweling her hair dry when she heard her sister yelling.

"Patty?"

She dropped the towel and raced through her bedroom. In the hall she could hear Patty screaming her name, but it was too far away to be coming from her sister's room. Liz followed the sound to Kid's bathroom and stared in horror. Bodies squirmed behind the red-smeared glass walls of the shower and pinkish water was leaking out of the open door. Liz slipped on it as she reached the opening, heart threatening to pound its way right out of her chest. Patty was in her panties, soaking wet and covered in blood. Kid was in there with her, just as bloody and completely naked. They appeared to be wrestling.

"You little fucker! What did you do to my sister?" Liz dropped to her knees, leaning into the shower and trying to separate them. That involved crawling right into the damn thing on her hands and knees and her robe fell halfway off in the process. She reached Patty and spun her around, searching wildly for wounds.

"Where did he hurt you?" she demanded frantically, "What did he do to you? Can you transform? I'm gonna put so many holes in him..."

She would kill him. Reaper or not, there had to be some way to put an end to him. No amount of money or fancy housing could make up for some little piece of shit molesting her sister. She'd thought she was protecting Patty by bringing her here and had walked her right into danger, instead...

"He got mad 'cause I came in here and he pushed me!" Patty wailed, "So I hit him. I hit him a lot...and now he's...there's something really wrong with him, Liz. I'm so sorry!".

Liz was jerked out of her adrenaline-fueled rage "Wait...what? You hit _him_? You're not hurt?"

"No, but Kid is and it must be bad, because look at him."

Liz looked. He was rolled into a ball, hyperventilating and clawing at the tile. He was raving about being hurt and trying to scrape the blood off the white walls.

"Oh, fuck, Patty. What did you do? Kid, come here and let me see." she demanded, grabbing his arm.

"Don't hurt me anymore!" he pulled away from her with incredible strength and Liz fell backward, sliding into Patty. Then she was being lifted bodily by strong hands and looked up into Lord Death's stunned face.

"What the...what's _happening_ here?" he demanded, gasping for breath. He'd felt Kid's soul ignite with terror and pain; it had nearly knocked him over all the way down in his office. He'd dashed up the stairs in a panic, which wasn't at all reduced when he saw three children in various states of gore-drenched nudity on the shower floor.

"Kid's hurt!" Patty sobbed, "I punched him a lot and now he's really, really upset."

Lord Death could feel just how upset his son was, and that it would probably get worse before it got better. He hadn't seen a breakdown this bad since the first one. The memory shot through him, and protectiveness burned through his fear and worry with white-hot intensity.

"Are either of you hurt?" He asked Liz, who was fumbling with her robe, trying to cover herself.

"No." her voice was small and for the first time since he'd met her, without the faintest him of bravado. She looked terrified, and so did Patty, but he had other things to deal with right now.

"Then you need to get out of here. Go to your rooms and get cleaned up." his voice was harsh, and his eyes were glowing. Patty was so scared when he hauled her out of the shower she thought she might wet her pants. She wanted to get her new nightie out of the corner, but didn't dare ask for it.

Liz grabbed her by the arm and dragged her away, not even worrying about her little sister being bloody and naked in front of the shocked maids gathering in the upstairs hall.

"We are in so much trouble. Oh my God, are we in trouble." she moaned, breaking into a run.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Work is done and I finally got some writing time - hooray! I've been seriously worn out, so hopefully this makes some kind of sense. It's the last serious chapter for a bit; the next one should be much lighter and will have the resolution of this arc with some Liz/Patty/Kiddo bonding time.
> 
> I've been wanting to do another Liz/Lord Death chapter and now I have the perfect excuse. One of my little headcanons is that Liz is one of the few people Lord Death really talks to about personal things (even more so than with Sid and Spirit), so I had a chance to develop the beginning of that relationship here. Thanks so much to everyone for being kind enough to read, review and follow - big hugs for all of you!

She'd made a mistake.  Instead of grabbing her bag and running for it, she'd let Patty go to her room to wash Kid's blood off and put some clothes on. Liz had paused to replace her own stained robe with jeans and a t-shirt, but she hadn't moved fast enough; Nadine appeared and blocked her bedroom door before she could leave. She damned herself for getting so soft that she'd broken her own biggest rule: never get separated.

And now it was too late. With Lord Death standing between her and the opened door, Liz had no way of defending herself.  Worse yet, she had no way of defending her sister. Why had she ever brought Patty to this place? Simple greed, and look where it had gotten them.  You didn't maim the son of one of the world's most powerful beings and get away scot free. There would to be a price to pay and it was going to be a big one.

"Please don't hurt Patty! It was all my fault. I wasn't watching her. _Please_ -" she blurted at the exact same moment that he said, "I'm sorry."

"Wait...what? Why are _you_ sorry?" now she was confused, as well as scared.

Lord Death took a step toward her and Liz skittered backwards, clutching her satchel to her chest. He dropped his arms to his sides and looked so utterly worn down that Liz loosened her grip on the bag. But only a little; maybe this was a ploy to get her guard down.

"Did you...is Patty okay?" she asked, barely able to get her voice above a whisper.

Death's head snapped up and Liz took another reflexive step back. Her terrified eyes broke his heart.  To see a child so frightened of him was horrifying.

"She's fine. I apologized for scaring her." a wan smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, "She said she'd forgive me if I let her eat a whole can of whipped cream. I told her she could have two."

Liz gave up trying to keep the quiver out of her voice "So you're not going to....you're not mad at us?"

"Why would I be mad at you?  None of this was your fault.  I'm sorry I didn't warn you.  He hasn't gotten really bad in a while and-" he stopped  abruptly when she started to cry.  Well, crying wasn't really the word.  It was more like an explosion.  Death could see her soul vibrating under the force of her emotions and wondered wildly what to do. Should he hug her, or would that be inappropriate? He absolutely zero experience in comforting teenaged girls. _Zero_.

Liz hated herself for being so weak, but all her pent-up adrenaline and fear had to go somewhere.  Her bag fell on the floor with a loud clank as she clapped her hands over her face, ashamed of letting him see her break down.  She hadn't cried this way in a very long time.  Not since she learned that hunger, or fright or pain couldn't be stopped by her tears.  That there were too many freaks out there who thrived on them.

Then she felt a strong arm around her; felt a caring hand rest on her damp hair, and she lost it completely.  Feeling like the accumulated stress of her entire life was pouring out all at once, Liz returned Lord Death's hug, grateful to have someone to hang on to. 

She cried until the she was weak in the knees, and when they finally buckled he guided her over to her new blue armchair so she could finish her hysterics in comfort.  He knelt beside her, not saying a word.  Not telling her to shush, or that everything would be okay. None of the stupid shit adults were supposed to say. He held her until she sobbed herself out, and when she finally lifted her face, he leaned in and clumsily patted at it with his handkerchief. 

"I messed up your suit" she said in a small voice. He glanced down at his damp, makeup-streaked jacket and told her it could be cleaned. And if not, there were dozens of others just like it in his closet.

"Don't tell anybody I cried, okay?" Liz took the handkerchief from him and blew her nose, "Patty doesn't like it when I get upset. She gets scared."

Lord Death gave her a little smile, "Don't worry, I won't tell anybody and Patty is downstairs, so she didn't hear you."

"What's she doing down there?" panic prickled down Liz' spine, "She might run away!"

"No, she's fine.  Nadine took her downstairs when I came in here."

"Why did you bring Nadine up anyway?  To carve us up if things didn't go your way?" Liz was only half joking, and he knew it.

"She was watching your door in case you tried to take off while I was with Patty. I figured of all the people in the house she's the only one scary enough to stop you." Lord Death's smile finally reached his eyes.

Liz bit her lip for a moment and finally worked up the courage to ask, "Is Kid okay?"

"He's asleep right now." Lord Death neatly sidestepped her question, or so he thought. Liz was too sharp for him, though.

"So you don't know if he's okay?"

"Physically, he's fine.  Reapers are almost impossible to kill; we can bounce back from just about anything in no time. Emotionally...well, it might take a while for him to calm down."

"Has he always been like this?" Liz asked, wondering how Lord Death had stood the shenanigans for years.  Every time Kid went off she wanted to kick him in the head for being so spoiled that piddly crap like crooked curtains could ruin his day.

"He's always been high-strung, but things got... serious after we lost his mother two years ago."

Losing a mother, Liz knew from experience, wasn't all _that_ bad.  "Even if he really loved her, he ought to be used to the idea by now. Maybe you should take him to a shrink or something."

Death rubbed his temples, trying to ward off the headache beginning to pound beneath them.

"It's not that easy.  Kid's got to take over for me some day, which will only be harder for him if there are doubts about his sanity." he looked grim, "I'm hoping he can get past what happened, but it was brutal, and he was only ten."

Liz leapt to her feet, "Wait, wait, wait! Two years ago.... so he's _twelve_? He's the same age as Patty? He acts so grown up when he's not having fits.....I thought he was just really fucking _short_." she shrieked, looking aghast.

"He is short. And he's always been a little mature for his age-"

She cut him off, "A _little_?  He wears a suit and reads newspapers, for crissakes."

"Kid's grown up too fast, but there was no help for it." He knew he sounded defensive, but his nerves were about frayed through.

She had no intention of letting him off the hook, "Well, there should be some help for it!  I don't even think he owns a pair of jeans and he's probably never played a video game in his life.  His room looks like a forty year old man lives in it. What the hell is wrong in this house?"

Death inhaled sharply, and before he could stop himself, the truth came out.

"What's wrong with this house is that my wife tried to cut our son's soul right out of his body in it!"  

Liz' heart lurched and her stomach went along for the ride.

"What?" she gasped, feeling guilty, horrified and petty in equal measures. It had never occurred to her that money couldn't prevent bad things from happening. But apparently they could happen, and did, and the man in front of her looked as if he was about to have a nervous breakdown in spite of all his wealth.

"She didn't do it on purpose," he said shakily, "There was a witch...a spell. Sophie was never very strong. The madness seeped right in, and living here, so close to the school, made everything worse. She thought....she thought she could protect Kid if she hid his soul away."

"Here, you better sit down." Liz urged, pulling at his arm and gesturing at the blue chair. He sat and she crouched near his knee, not sure what to do next. Hesitantly she put out her hand and patted his, trying to comfort him the way he'd comforted her earlier. It seemed to work because he took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

"I had to stop her," he muttered, more to the ceiling than to the girl beside him, "There was blood everywhere.  All over her white dress, and that mess in the shower reminded Kid of it. It's the worst trigger he has. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, taking her away from him. Taking her away from myself. "

"Sounds like you loved her a lot." Liz said, getting up and walking across the room to fetch her satchel. He looked at her tiredly.

"I still do. She was my world. Nothing works quite right in it without her. Kid and I have muddled through, but I'm too...distracted to be a really good father."

There was a bottle of whiskey in the bottom of the satchel and Liz cracked it open.

"Here," she said, offering it to him, "I think you need some of this."

"I thought we agreed you weren't going to drink anymore." he said sternly.

"I _haven't_.  You just saw me open it! It was in case Patty and I had to leave. If we ever have to go back, I'll need it."

He leaned over and gripped the bottle, keeping his eyes on hers.

"I want you to listen to me. Really listen.  You will _never_ have to go back. You can leave this house any time you want; you're not prisoners here. But you will always have money, and a roof over your head and people to take care of you if you need them. Do you understand me? You don't need the cash, or the Faberge egg, or the silver, or anything else you have in that sack to protect you."

Liz' eyes went wide. "You knew I had them all along?" she yelped. So much for him being distracted and not noticing stuff.  She furtively tried to remember everything else she'd done when she thought he wasn't looking.

"Yes, and you're welcome to them if they make you feel safe, but you don't need them. I won't let anything happen to you and Patty.  You're part of this family now, for what it's worth."

"It's worth a lot," Liz told him solemnly, releasing her hold on the whiskey bottle, "It's worth everything."


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be aware that this chapter mentions the use of psychotropic/anesthetic medication in a way that would be fatal to humans. I'm not supporting the abuse of medication. It's been included only because canon states that dyes, toxins, etc. don't stay in Kid's system for long, so I think it would take a lot of it to have any effect on him. Also, as we know, Stein is into reckless experimentation.
> 
> This is the end of the current arc, and I hope to have some lighter fun with the next couple of chapters. If anyone has a scenario they'd find interesting, let me know! Thank you to my pal Wordfiend, who requested that I list all my stories in chronological order on my profile page. It's actually helping me keep my timeline straight :) A special hug goes out to SempiternalDreamer for our fun, much-enjoyed PM discussions!

Lord Death watched his son's body shake and twitch beneath the quilt, wanting desperately to give him a reassuring pat. He refrained though, fearing that touching Kid might make things worse.  He  could hear the housekeeper directing the gory cleanup efforts in the bathroom and wondered if they should call in one of those crime scene cleaning companies. Mrs. Hurst could work wonders, but it looked like the set of a _Saw_ movie in there.

The bedroom door opened slowly and Patty stuck her head in, big blue eyes still red from crying.

"Is he better?" she asked.

"Not much."

"Oh."

Liz told her to come in and Patty tiptoed over hesitantly, still kind of afraid. She knew Lord Death wasn't mad at her, but she bet Kid would be when he woke up. Not that Patty would blame him; she'd done something pretty bad.  _Really_ bad, because Liz was actually giving Kid her fierce, worried look; the one she made when she thought something might happen to Patty.

There was a big rectangular bandage in the middle of Kid's forehead, covering the place where she'd done the most damage.  Lord Death told her the cracked skull beneath it was already healed, but that Kid liked band-aids and he'd appreciate it when he came to.  Patty totally understood that.  Having someone put a bandage on you meant they noticed you'd gotten hurt; that you deserved a little attention and sympathy. Band-aids were love. Liz drew tiny smiley faces on them and sealed them with a kiss. Patty wondered if Kid would like a smiley face.  Probably not, because she couldn't draw a really perfect circle.

Lord Death wished there was a bandage he could put on his son's soul.  He'd cleaned Kid up and got him into some pajamas, but the child was trapped in a vortex of terror and nothing seemed able to penetrate it. He feared for the eventual effect on Kid; wondered if his fits would eventually drive him into madness like the brother he knew nothing about.  As usual, he didn't have the time to worry about it, either.  Thailand was on the brink of civil war and he needed to neutralize the pre-Kishin provoking it as soon as possible. The dead and injured were already drawing other Evil Humans into the vicinity. Marie might have helped pull Kid out of his tailspin, but he couldn't ask her to leave the battlefield in Asia to attend to his personal matters. He rubbed his forehead and heaved a miserable, frustrated sigh.

That worried Patty.

"It's _going_ to be okay, right?"  she asked.  Her puffy eyes welled up again and her lower lip started to quiver. Liz turned toward her, but for the first time Patty wasn't looking to her sister for comfort. Instead she climbed onto Lord Death's knee and buried her face against his stained, damp jacket.  It was just what Death needed.  
  
"Don't worry, honey.  He'll come out of it in a while."  he said, stroking her golden hair. He couldn't console his own child, but he could soothe this one and he hugged her like he wished he could hug Kid.  It was the second time he'd dealt with a crying girl, and he thought he was getting much better at it.  Patty was rubbing her runny nose on him, and imagining the look on his valet's face when the fussbudget saw the condition of Death's suit was terribly amusing.  The suspicious, slightly jealous look Liz was giving him was  _not_ amusing and he reached over and squeezed her hand to reassure her. She relaxed and left her fingers entwined with his.  A moment later he felt her cheek rest hesitantly against his arm.

Death's secretary was taken aback by the sight when she came in. She was new, and while her boss was an unfailingly polite gentleman, he had never shared the details of his personal life with her. He was mercurial, constantly shifting between burning intensity and profound preoccupation. His moods, from gloomy to ridiculously giddy, changed just as often. His puppet in the Death Room was downright crazy.  She had never seen this tender, sweet side of him and was hesitant  to interrupt. 

He knew she was there, of course, and looked up questioningly at her.

"I have an urgent message from Mr. Albarn, sir. The situation is getting worse.  You'd better come back to the office." she gave Kid a glance and shook her head pityingly.

Death was torn, but Liz bumped his shoulder with hers.

"Go. We'll stay here." she said simply, and her words were not an offer, but a promise.

He nodded, and gave her a grateful kiss on the forehead. He gave Patty a last squeeze and hurried out of the room, his focus utterly changed before he even reached the door.

"Well this is a hell of a way to spend a Saturday," Liz grouched.  On normal weekends she went back to her room after breakfast, leaving Patty to annoy the hell out of Kid until lunchtime.

"And I never got my pancakes" Patty looked mutinous for a moment, then added, "But I guess that's my own fault."

Kid thrashed a little and begged not to be hurt. Liz told him to be quiet, and he opened his eyes. They were unfocused, dulled with anguish and drugs. He had enough phenobarbitol in him to kill fifteen people his size, and a weird-looking gray haired man came in at random intervals to inject more.  Liz didn't trust the guy; he was way too gleeful about his work and wildly liberal with his dosages.

"Don't hurt me!" Kid repeated, batting weakly at her and missing by a foot. He was shivering, terrorized by something that only he could see.  Liz grabbed his wobbling hand.

"Listen to me. You're fine, nothing's after you." she told him firmly.

Kid was starting to think again, to remember, and he was horrified. His tongue felt thick and unmanageable, but panic forced it into working.

"You'll.. leave now...that you've seen...right?  I'm so awful. I shouldn't be like this...nothing but...garbage."

Patty jumped on the bed and threw her arms around him, "You're not garbage, and I'm sorry I hit you! I didn't know it would make you get weirder!"

The housekeeper came out of the bathroom when she heard Kid's voice rise to a wail.

"I'll get Doctor Stein," she said, "Can you hold down the fort until he gets here?"

Doctor Stein must be the freak with the drugs. Liz and Patty nodded in unison.

"We'll watch him good!" Patty called as Mrs. Hurst left the room.  She hugged Kid tight, like she might be able to squeeze the madness out of him and tried to cajole him into good humor by describing the Band-Aid on his forehead.

Kid's could talk again, although his brain was still several steps behind.

"We're not symmetrical! There's only one of you, Patty.  Someone bring me another Patty!"

"You are stoned out of your mind," Liz informed him, but he was obviously getting more lucid by the second and his thrashing was getting worse.  If he went into some kind of full-body symmetry fit, her sister might get injured.

"Ah, what the hell," she muttered, rolling her eyes, "Scoot over, Patty."

She climbed up beside the distraught Reaper, taking one of his shaking hands while Patty held the other. That stalled the symmetry rant, but did nothing to stem the tide of self-disgust.  Now that she knew the cause, Liz wasn't irritated by it as much as usual. She patted his soft hair rhythmically. That always made Patty feel better, and she hoped it would calm him down until the creepy doctor dude paid them another visit. Some of the tension left Kid's thin shoulders.

"I don't want you to go," he mumbled, "You probably want to though, because I'm trash. I should just be killed - I'm disgusting."

The idea that a little boy, someone the same age as Patty, thought he _deserved_ to die infuriated Liz as much as it horrified her.

"We're not leaving you," she said ferociously,  "Nobody's going to hurt you and I will fucking destroy anybody who tries, okay?"

And as she said it, Liz realized that she meant it.  Shit, she was actually starting to _worry_ about the little freak.

Kid's vision was blurring, but he forced himself to look up at his weapon.

"Promise?"

"I just did, didn't I? And I promised your dad, too. Now shut the hell up and chill out."

She sighed as they settled themselves against each other. Like it or not, she had just shouldered a whole new responsibility. Another difficult person to cajole and manage and be anxious about.  She didn't love Kid, or even like him all that much, but he _needed_ her. So she'd stay in her new life for more than just money, and watch over him like she'd promised.  Maybe someday she'd even learn to care.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to SempiternalDreamer and a sudden need for emotional outlet, I broke through the writer's block and finally managed to get this done. It feels wooden and clunky to me, but it's a new chapter and it feel great to be writing again! Thanks for sticking with me and for the so-very-much-appreciated reviews.
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to the memory of the divine David Bowie, who passed last week, leaving a huge hero-shaped hole in my life. I've adored him since I was twelve years old and shall miss him greatly.

Kid's hysteria had subsided into depressed avoidance, and Liz was sick of it. She hadn't laid eyes on him since he'd come out of his catatonic state and forced everyone out of his room.  While she and Patty worked in the third-floor school room, he petulantly insisted on his tutors coming to his private study.  He hadn't made an appearance at the table, choosing to eat alone behind his locked door.  At least she hoped he was eating; with Kid it was never safe to assume things.  He wasn't even concerned about the house falling into asymmetrical ruins. You knew it was bad if he was too crazy to worry about his _regular_ level of crazy. Liz thought he belonged in a hospital getting serious psychiatric care, or at least seeing a shrink, but had been repeatedly told it wasn't an option.

By the evening of the seventh day, she'd had it. She was sitting in the library with Lord Death and Patty like she imagined an actual family would. An actual family that was okay with one member being in self-imposed solitary confinement. It didn't seem like anybody was _ever_ planning deal with the situation and, as much as she hated it, Liz had made herself a promise to look after him.

"You know, Kid's been locked in his room for days. Aren't you worried?" she asked Lord Death, who was reading to Patty.  Liz secretly enjoyed listening, but always feigned indifference behind a copy of Vogue or the Death Times society pages. Kid's father looked up from 'A Tale of Two Cities' in a dazed sort of way.  Like maybe he'd forgotten he _had_ a son.

"There isn't much we can do except let him work through this."

Liz made an exasperated noise, "Have you even _tried_?"

"Uh, not for a while." Death replied, looking uncomfortable. He shifted guiltily in his seat and Patty complained about not being able to see the page with the picture.

"Not since he woke up, you mean." Liz scolded, "You are such a wuss."

She tossed her magazine aside, "I'm gonna go up there and drag him out."

"Good luck with that." Death sounded like she'd announced her intention to make the sun rise in the West. His failure to do anything, to even have _hope_ for Kid made Liz mad, and she felt obligated to deliver a nasty parting shot.

"Well, somebody has to try. His mom wouldn't have left him up there all by himself for a week, would she? I bet she'd be ashamed of us. Especially _you."_ she tossed her hair and flounced out with maximum attitude.

Death glanced down at Patty, "Am I really that bad?"

"Pretty much," she shrugged and pointed at the book, " _Read."_

Upstairs, Liz took a calming breath, and knocked on Kid's door.

"Hey!"  she called, "Open up. I want to talk to you."

"I'm sorry, but I'm busy."  He sounded faint and overly polite. In Liz' limited experience with him, that wasn't a good sign.

"Yeah, you're sorry all right. Come out of there or I'm gonna get Patty and shoot this door down.  And I'll make sure I do it as unevenly as possible!"

He heaved a sigh that was audible through three inches of ebony, and the lock snapped open.

"Fine. What is it that you need?" Kid asked impatiently. He moved into the doorway, blocking the entrance to his sanctuary like an angry little boulder.

In spite of his manner,  he seemed fragile and sort of broken to Liz.  She'd seen the look in his eyes before. In worn-down junkies and homeless wanderers on the streets of New York. On her own reflection in the blurry metal mirrors of subway bathrooms. That look of hopeless despair.

Crap. Now she felt all bad and big sister-y about him.  

"You've been up here by yourself long enough. Time to come out."  she said, hiding her pity behind a facade of bossy authority.

"No thank you. Please go away." Kid turned to go back inside and she grabbed his shoulder.

"Don't touch me!" He jerked out of Liz' grasp, "Why can't you leave me _alone_?"

"Because it's time for you to stop acting like a freak!" she  told him, "I know what you're going through, but hiding won't make it any better."

Kid's irritation was rapidly giving way to annoyance. 

"What _precisely_ am I going through that you know so much about?" he demanded.

"I know everything, Kid.  Your dad told me everything."

"Everything about WHAT?" he was yelling now, and Liz swore she saw a spark out of the corner of her eye. 

"About your mom. About what she did to you. I can't-"

Fury ignited Kid's glare, anger burning away the last of his apathy."He had no right to tell you that. It's none of your business!"

She was right; she _had_ seen a spark.  The dangerous purple glow of death magic had burst into life around Kid's clenched fists.  For the first time since meeting him, Liz was afraid of the young Reaper.  He might not have his father's power, but she was pretty sure he could rip her face off if sufficiently provoked.  And he seemed pretty provoked right now.

"I know you've gone through hell, and you're a mess but there are people in this house who want to help you and you're worrying them."

"Oh, really? Like who?" Kid shouted. Wispy black death's heads began swarm over the purple energy clouding around his hands.

Liz took a risk and went on the offense. "Like ME!" she hollered, leaning into his face, "I'm worried, you rotten little brat, so stop screaming at me and turn off the fireworks. Or are you going to kill me for giving a damn about you?"

Kid took a step back and she followed, keeping it up close and personal. She had an idea that he wasn't used to being challenged, and she was right on the money. His anger shriveled up and he became small and miserable again. The death magic retreated back to wherever he kept it when he wasn't destroying his enemies, summoning his skateboard or having a tantrum.

"Why would you care? You've seen what I'm like."

"Well, you're fucked up, but you're not the only person around here who is. Not by a long shot. And it's not like it's your fault, what happened to you. What went down with your mom was some messed up shit."

Kid felt like he couldn't breathe.  He never discussed his mother with anyone. He or his father occasionally made passing reference to her in private conversation, but they never really _talked_ about her, and they avoided the subject of her final moments like the plague. The words were hard to find, but he needed Liz to know, to understand that Sophie shouldn't be defined by her last, mad actions.

"She...wasn't a bad person." he stammered. 

"It wasn't her fault, either. It was that witch's fault. What was she like?"  
  
"How should I know?" Kid snarled, "I never met her! And if I ever do I'll be too busy tearing apart her rotten, disgusting soul to find out."  
  
For the second time in five minutes, Liz was reminded that the little boy in front of her held the power of life and death in hands that had a pretty tenuous grip on sanity.

"Sorry," she said hastily, "not the witch. I meant your mom. You never talk about her."

"You never talk about your mother, either." Kid retorted, playing for time.

"Yeah," Liz huffed, "But your mom loved you. Mine didn't.  She was a self-centered whore. She was some rich guy's mistress, and she only had us because she thought it would give her a hold on him. Only it didn't, and he ditched her right after Patty was born."

"So you don't like her because she was a...a prostitute? Doing that doesn't make her a bad person either, you know."

Liz was mildly amazed, "Sometimes you're not as uptight as you seem. No, there's nothing wrong with it, that's not why I think she's crap.  Dumping us with anybody she could find while she drowned her sorrows with cocaine and men is what made her a piece of shit. Who lets their _dealer_ babysit their kids, for fuck's sake?"

"What happened to her?" Kid was fascinated in a horrified sort of way. This was the kind of stuff that happened on bad television dramas, not to average humans. Not that he actually _knew_ any average humans, but still _._

Disgust pursed Liz' lips, "She hooked for a while, high end stuff, until she found another guy who could afford a full-time girlfriend for hire. Guy didn't like kids, though, so that was it for Patty and I.  She just took off one day and didn't even make arrangements for us.  We never saw her again. The neighbors took turns feeding us and giving us a place to sleep for a while, but eventually one of them called Children's Services and we ran. I wasn't going into some foster care joint and I wasn't letting Patty get separated from me."

Her voice was hard, but Kid could hear the pain beneath it.  For all her tough posturing, she was damaged underneath and that was something he understood well. He still didn't want to talk about his mother, but he needed to give her _something_ after she'd been so honest with him.  He went into his study, where he opened one of the built-in storage drawers behind the paneling. Liz followed him in and he handed a framed photograph to her without a word.

Liz couldn't be sure, because he was so damned short, but Kid looked about eight years old in the picture. He was leaning against the knee of a gorgeous woman, both of them smiling with delight. Even on paper there was something vibrant about her, as if she was more alive than most people. Liz thought the quality, ironic as it might be for a Reaper, was even more attractive than the long white-blond hair and perfect features.

"Wow." was all she could come up with; she simply wasn't sure what to say.  They studied the image together in silence for a moment, and then Kid tried to put it back in the drawer.

"Don't" Liz said, grabbing his arm, "Leave it out. Don't be afraid to look at it."  
  
She took the frame and propped it up on one of the bookcases, making sure to get it exactly in the center of the shelf. Kid looked completely freaked out and Liz grabbed him by the shoulders.  
  
"The thing is, you need to learn to deal with it." she told him, "Every time you lose your shit, that fucking witch wins all over again. "

"I can help it. It just happens. I don't want it to, but I can't stop it. I'm weak. Disgusting, vile-" Kid was vibrating with anxiety and he looked terrified, like Patty used to when life dealt them yet another frightening curveball. Liz hugged him hard enough to shut him up while she frantically thought of a way to distract him. She had no idea what Kid did when he was upset; she'd just have to go with what she knew worked for a girl his age.

"Come on, let's do something." She said, pushing him firmly toward the door.

"What?"he was full of apprehension, but allowed her to guide him down the hall.

"You're going through a rough time and you need to be babied a little." she announced, steering him into the media room and onto a couch, "We're going to go watch a movie, anything you want."

"What?" Kid gaped at her like she was speaking a foreign language. Liz tried again.

"What's your favorite thing? And not some gloomy black-and-white shit that only plays at art houses. Pick something fun...what do you like that's not depressing?"

"Uhm... I...Uh...like James Bond movies." It came out as a question, like maybe she'd slap him if he said the wrong thing.

"Never seen one, but I've always wanted to." Liz said cheerfully, although she'd never thought any such a thing.

Kid finally relaxed a little, "We could watch the first one." he suggested shyly.

"Okay, you get it ready and I'm going to go down and get you a big-ass ice cream sundae and a bowl of popcorn. See? I'm even willing to brave Nadine for you." Liz grinned at him and headed to the kitchen. On the way, she stopped in the library to gloat over her success and to invite Lord Death and Patty to watch the movie with them.

Kid's father was seriously shocked. He dropped "A Tale of Two Cities" in amazement and Patty gave her sister a dirty look. Frankly, she thought Kid's decision to come out of his room paled in comparison to the storming of the Bastille.

"How'd you manage that?" Death asked.

Liz gave him a smug grin.

"It's called dealing with personal shit. You ought to try it sometime."

He supposed he should rebuke her for her sassiness, but was too relieved to do it.  Besides, she was right. Instead, he told her he and Patty would be up as soon as they finished their chapter because the little girl was sure to inflict bodily harm on him if he stopped in the middle of a good part.

"I win! We raced up the stairs and I won, Sis!" Patty shrieked delightedly when she finally burst into the media room with Lord Death behind her.

"I sat through twenty two whole pages and Mrs. Deforge cut off the Bastille guy's head!" she added with relish.

Kid, ensconced in the center of the sofa with a blanket and a bowl of ice cream, shot his father a reproachful glance as he paused the movie.

"You missed the whole beginning, Dad."

Picking up on Kid's jealousy, Liz told Patty to sit beside her and tried to change the subject with the first thing that came to mind.

"Sean Connery is wicked cool." she exclaimed with the fervor of the newly converted.

Patty sniffed, and dug into the popcorn bowl. "Does he cut off anybody's head?"

"No, but he's hot. Like, _majorly_ hot."

"That's not the point of the story." Kid rolled his eyes heavenward.

"Never hurts, though." Lord Death blurted,  baffled and uncomfortable in this new social setting.  He'd never had to choose one child's activity over another's and he had the distinct feeling he'd messed up once again.

"Well, you've got good taste in men, at least." Liz said, unnerving him even more.  She jerked her head in Kid's direction, which Death correctly interpreted to mean that he should sit next to his son.

"Are you feeling better?" he asked awkwardly.

"I'm fine." came the stony reply.

Lord Death looked at Liz, who made a cryptic flapping motion at him, and then back at Kid's pale, hurt little face. Liz was right. His wife _would_ be ashamed of him; not just because he'd let their child down, but that, once again, he hadn't even noticed how badly he was needed. He had to do what he could to make things right and hoped he could find the words. 

"I'm glad," he said softly, putting his arm around Kid's stiff shoulders "I've really missed you and I won't leave you alone again. I'm not good at this, but I promise you I'll try to do better. I'm here for you.  We all are."

Kid didn't answer, but he nodded and slowly eased into his father's comforting embrace. After they'd settled themselves and the movie was rolling again, Death snuck a peek at Liz, who grinned approvingly and gave him a double thumbs up. He'd once ended a global-scale war with a single, well-timed reap and hadn't felt this proud of himself.

Two thumbs up!  Maybe there was hope for him after all.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took longer than expected because my new server ate half of the original chapter and I nearly died of it. But I finally got it rewritten, so here's a little bonding between Liz and Lord Death, because I love writing them together.  And because my headcanon says that he comes to rely on her and tells her more than he tells anybody else. He knows he can trust her to tell him the straight truth and she knows he respects her.
> 
> Deep thanks to everyone who's reading - I appreciate you spending time on this little story <3\. Special hugs for the folks who took extra time out of their days to review.

"I'm going to go spit on every single thing in your room! _Everything_!" Patty hollered as she ran up the stairs. She didn't bother to run very fast, though. She knew he'd cave before she got anywhere close to the top. And he did.

"Fine!" Kid's shout echoed off the foyer walls, "But not for long, do you understand me? We've been gone all afternoon and I have homework."

Not that he'd ever put pleasure before duty, of course, but he really couldn't wait to get outside in the summer sunshine and ride Beelzebub just for _fun_. He and Patty were getting pretty good at double-rider stunts and when he did solo tricks he had a very appreciative audience. However, he didn't think it wasn't a good idea to let Patty believe she could easily have her way all the time; that was a sure-fire recipe for utter chaos.

"She is so spoiled." he pretend-groused to Liz, who was making a weary attempt to ignore both of them.

"Oh, like you can talk, you little brat." she replied. There wasn't much bite in her sarcasm, though. Kid wondered if she was coming down with something.

"Come and watch us, Sis!" Patty implored, pulling on her sister's arm. It was so much fun to watch Liz scream when they did dangerous stunts. Sometimes Patty fell off the back of the skateboard on purpose, just to keep things interesting. She _always_ went into weapon form just before she landed, but her sister still freaked out every time. It was hilarious.

Liz shook her head, "Maybe in a little bit, okay? You and Kid go have fun."

They'd just gotten home from a reap and she was tired and achy. She didn't want to do anything but spend some quality tub time in her peaceful, private, _lockable_ bathroom. Although she'd gone fifteen years without so much as a bed to call her own, it was quickly becoming impossible to imagine life without a three-room suite. Four if you counted her beautiful closet with all of its customized hanging rods and whisper-quiet fitted drawers. She _loved_ her closet.

Kid paused at the vestibule door.

"I really should go report to Dad before I do anything else." he said, sounding just a little plaintive.

As usual, Liz saw right through him. She'd had a bad afternoon, but he'd had worse.

"I'll do it." she said, "Get out of here."

They didn't need to be told twice, and Liz heaved a sigh of relief when the triumphant Patty slammed the front door behind them. She loved her sister, and Kid wasn't _always_ a living horror, but damn did they wear her out sometimes. Kid had insisted on flying in lieu of using a mirror, which was fine for him but sucked for Liz, who got backaches from being in weapon form for extended periods of time. When they arrived at their destination they'd been ambushed, and their simple, single-target assignment turned into a free-for-all battle and a mass reap. Afterward Kid plunged into a tailspin because they hadn't collected an even number of souls, and Patty had found a big snake they wouldn't let her take home. Coaxing them out of their respective fits had taken half the trip home. The big skateboarding-versus-homework argument promptly took up the other half.

Mrs. Hurst appeared from the back of the house, carrying a loaded try with her usual efficient bustle.

"Oh, you're back!" she smiled, and Liz felt one of those flares of warmth she'd been having lately. That she had a home and someone to be glad when she returned to it was no small thing.

The housekeeper took in Liz' dusty clothes and tired face, "Looks like it was a tough one," she said sympathetically, "Why don't you go upstairs and take a nice bath?"

"I will in a little bit. I told Kid to go on out and play with Patty, so I'm going to go see Lord Death and give him our rundown first. "

"That was nice of you, dear. I'm going that way myself." Mrs. Hurst made a little gesture with the tray, "I swear that man would starve himself to death if we didn't put food right in front of him. No pun intended."

Liz, who'd physically forced a piece of toast down Kid's throat two days before, rolled her eyes, "It runs in the family. Here, let me take it to him since I'm going in there anyway."

She took the big silver tray, along Mrs. Hurst's thanks, and carried it down one of the halls that branched off the foyer. The one that most people only used for official business with Death. Which you generally didn't want to have if it didn't involve tea cakes and sandwiches. It was kind of like the West Wing at the White House, only weirder. At least Liz was _pretty_ sure the President didn't have multiple dimensions at his beck and call.

The office door was half-open. Lord Death left it that way whenever possible, mostly so he could keep tabs on the screaming and fighting that often echoed through the house. Granted, he only stepped in when things got totally out of hand, but at least he was _trying_ to pay attention these days.

She tapped on the door with the toe of her boot and when Death told her to come in she elbowed it the rest of the way open, maneuvering the big tray around it. He jumped up to help her but she brushed him off.

"I got it. Get all the crap off the coffee table so I can put it down."

He hastily gathered up a handful of intelligence reports and satellite photos to make space for the Georgian silver and Sevres china.

Liz gratefully put down the heavy tray. "That is a fuck ton of food. Mrs. Hurst must think you haven't eaten in a week. Which you probably haven't."

Lord Death glanced over her dirty work uniform and a playful grin livened up his usually serious face.

"Everything quiet at the OK Corral, partner?"

"Shut up." she tossed her cowboy hat onto a tottering pile of ledgers and stretched her tired back.

"Seen Wyatt Earp lately?"

"Seriously, shut up or I'll smash this butt-ugly teapot on your head." Liz threatened, "I never should have let Patty pick our uniforms. This Wild West cowboy shit sucks. If anybody back in New York saw me in this I would die."

"You might need something a little more decorous for formal affairs." Lord Death conceded, still grinning.

Liz glared at him. He'd inadvertently hit another sore spot. "Yeah, Kid already thought of that, and _he_ picked those outfits. They're maroon. Maroon _pantsuits_. I look like a fucking bellhop."

Lord Death winced.

"Where do you even get a maroon pantsuit nowadays? I mean, pants are fine for afternoon or business affairs and everyone needs a good power suit. But that means a nice, princess-seamed black Armani jacket, not something that hasn't been in style since 1994. Kid's got excellent taste in menswear, but he obviously needs work in the ladies' department. "

Liz stared at him with her mouth hanging open.

"Dude. _Princess-seamed Armani jacket_? You can't remember to eat, but you're all up on women's clothes?"

"My wife was a seamstress when I met her; we've had a subscription to Women's Wear Daily since 1910. I bet I know more about women's clothes that you ever will. Plus I read some of those magazines you leave lying around. Notice that I'm not voicing any stodgy, adulty complaint about that exposed midriff? Teen Vogue, September issue."

"You pay attention to the weirdest crap." Liz told him.

"I try to stay hip."

She gave him one of those looks that only a teenage girl can muster, "It's not 1952 anymore. If you were plugged in for realz, you wouldn't say 'hip'."

"I'll try to remember that," He gestured at the loaded tray on the coffee table, "Join me?"

"Uh, sure. I guess."

Liz sank rather gratefully into a chair while Death hunted up another cup from the cabinet where the ugly office tea set lived when not in use.

"Do you want to pour or shall I?" he asked, taking a seat in the chair beside hers and gesturing at the pot.

"Uh, you do it. I don't know how." Liz suddenly felt uncomfortably out of place. She'd never even been to a pretend tea party, let alone a real one. Death expertly filled the cups and asked if she took milk and sugar.

Now she felt like a real hick. How was she supposed to know? When she was little she'd smoked candy cigarettes and pretended the water in her glass was vodka. By the time she was twelve, she'd moved up to the real thing, and worse. She had no business sitting in here drinking out of a cup that was probably worth more than most people's cars. Even if it _was_ uglier than sin.

"I don't know. You decide." she said in a hard, tight voice, "What's the big deal?"

"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea." Lord Death replied.

"Are you making fun of me?" Liz demanded. Teasing her about a uniform they mutually thought silly was fine, but making fun of her ignorance was not. Making fun of people made them feel like shit. Like you would if kids at school picked on you for having holes in the knees of your jeans. Like a little girl might feel if she saw a drawing she'd just given her mother all crumpled up in the wastebasket...

Liz felt her eyes sting and she scrunched her face up in an attempt to channel tears into pure fury.

Lord Death put the cup down, wondering what he'd done wrong now. Why were teenagers so damned _touchy_?

"Of course not, honey," he touched her cheek worriedly, "It's just a quote by Henry James."

"Henry James sounds like a pompous asshole." she sounded fierce, but her body and face relaxed. Okay, so he hadn't been making fun of her. Just being his usual weird self. Plus, she'd learned "pompous" in English last week and using it in a sentence made her feel good.

"Actually, he kind of was." Death agreed, "But he was right about how nice it is to enjoy little everyday events. Especially pleasant, civilized ones with people we like."

She smiled at that, and he felt his stomach unclench. He'd sidestepped the landmine of inexplicable teen wrath for once.

"Okay, so let's do this thing, then." Liz was in haughty, smart-mouthed command of herself again, "Do I want the milk and sugar or what?"

"Let's try it plain and see how that goes." he passed the cup to her and Liz looked askance at it before finally risking a sip. She was a black coffee girl and was surprised at how comforting the hot, prettily scented tea was.

"This is not bad." she said grudgingly. Lord Death nodded toward the tray.

"Have a little sandwich and some cake to go with it." he suggested, "And a scone. They're delicious with clotted cream and lemon curd. You could use a little pick me up; you look tired. Rough reap?"

Liz took the plate he handed her "You have no idea." she told him, taking a bite of chicken salad on delicately sliced bread, "We got the guy you sent us after, but he had, like, thirty-four friends we didn't know about until they jumped out of the bushes at us."

Death's teacup paused midway to his lips, "So _thirty-five_ all together? And they were all pre-kishin? Was Kid _sure_?"

"As sure as he could be while they were trying to kill him. We've got the souls all here if you want to take a look at them yourself. Kid wasn't wrong, but even if they weren't kishin wannabes, they were being a bunch of dicks."

"Well, that's hardly a killing offense."

"It is if you're being a dick with an AK-47."

"Fair enough."

"You're supposed to be worried about Kid, by the way. Just sayin'. They knocked the hell out of him. He's fine, but if someone's been trying to kill your son you should _ask_ , you know? Anyway, the deal is that it's worse than you thought. Whoever you have in charge down there isn't giving you good information."

She stared at him penetratingly, "But you knew that, didn't you? And that's why you sent us to take care of that reap. You think you've got a dirty Deathscythe on your hands, huh?"

"Did Kid tell you that?"

Liz looked offended, "I be not be as smart as him, but I can figure _some_ things out for myself."

"You, Miss," Lord Death gestured at her with half of a cucumber sandwich, "are smarter than anybody thinks you are. Including yourself."

He finished the sandwich, deep in thought. Liz knew that he and Kid _never_ talked with their mouths full, so while she waited for him to finish chewing she took another sip of tea and idly glanced at the pile of documents he'd shoved aside to make room for the tea tray. The satellite photos on top were awfully familiar. She'd seen the same view from the air once already.

"Hey, this is where we were today!" she exclaimed., "You gonna bomb them or something?"

"I hope that doesn't become necessary." Lord Death wondered why he was telling her this, "That's always the last resort."

"So we were the first resort?" Liz put the photo down and peeked at the papers underneath.

"Unfortunately, yes," Lord Death's frustration was sharp and bitter, "Since I can't go myself and I don't have a Deathscythe I can trust, I have to send the next best thing."

"Must suck that the next best thing is your own kid. I'd hate sending Patty somewhere I knew was dangerous." she said pityingly.

"Not just Kid. You and Patty are my girls and I hated sending _all_ of you. I wish I'd known how bad the situation was beforehand, but, as you said, I'm not getting reliable information."

 _His girls_. Liz felt another of those warm, cozy feelings and feigned deep interest in a piece of green paper to hide it. Feigning deep interest got her to reading it, and she realized she'd gotten her hands on a manifest.

"Holy shit, that's a lot of guns!" she shrieked. She might not know how to preside over afternoon tea, but she knew all about weaponry and this was enough to...to...

"Are you gonna start a _war_?" she demanded, wide-eyed. It was hard to imagine Kid's distracted, distant father in charge of anything so complicated and dangerous. What if he wandered off in the middle and forgot to finish it?

Death sighed, "Let's call that the second resort. There are rumors that a particularly evil soul is gathering a strong following, possibly with intent to overthrow the current government. Rumor also has it that my Deathscythe may be on his side. The intel he sent for your job today listed one target, not thirty-five. My guess is that if I'd let him take care of it, I'd have gotten that single reap and the others would have been kept a secret that went on living."

Why, he wondered again, was he telling her all this? It was on a top level need-to-know basis and she was a fifteen year old child. Still, he'd forgotten how good it felt to discuss things with a sympathetic and shrewd listener. Even though she was far too young to be the sounding board he needed, she could be counted on to tell him the plain truth.

"Guy probably pissed off the wrong people and they figured it would be a way to get rid of him and keep your Deathscythe looking good at the same time. That way it might seem like he's still doing his job." Liz said sagely.

She calmly downed her scone, while Death watched with bemused respect.

"How do you know these things?"

"I watch a lot of movies." she shrugged, then added, "Plus I know bad guys. The drug dudes and the mob do this all the time. Not take over a whole country, I mean. Just anybody who gets on the wrong side of them. Good way to make off with a lot of cash and stuff if you sneak in while the shit's going down. Patty and I scored big time that way a couple of times. Like, one time, three thousand in cash and a couple kilos of heroin."

He really didn't want to know that. Perhaps she wasn't far too young after all.

"Maybe I should send you to my meeting with the UN tonight. I think you understand all this better than I do, and I sure as hell don't want to go."

Liz shook her head, "I can't. I have to go take a bath; my hair looks like shit."

"I was just teasing."

She looked slightly disappointed.

"Well, sucks to be you, then. Send your clown thing instead. No, wait, don't. That thing is creepy as fuck and I don't think it's right in the head. It might start a war for giggles."

Lord Death smiled fondly at her, "I prefer to call it a possible pre-emptive countermeasure instead of a war."

"You can call it whatever you want. Still a war. Do you want to look at those souls with Kid? He's out blowing off some steam with Patty, but I can call him in."

"No, I trust his judgment. Anyway, he won't like all of this. He doesn't feel we should be involved in world politics as much as we are."

"What does he know? He's twelve years old and he's not right in the head, either."

As if to prove her point, the front door gave a thunderous bang and Kid's screaming could be clearly heard from the front hall, along with Patty's maniacal laughter.

"What the hell is wrong with you, Patty? I said I needed to wash my hands, not that you should turn the hose on me! Who does that? Hoses are _not_ for playing with. I'm all wet. And you know what the label on this suit says? It says _dry clean only_. And now there's water all over the floor. And mud. And grass. And it's only where I'm standing, because you're dry. Oh, fuck, I need to clean this up. It's disgusting. I need a mop. I need a mop! I need a mop, damnit! _Mrs. Hurst I need a mop_!"

"I really need to do something about his language. It's getting terrible." Lord Death observed. It was obvious that the Thompson sisters, Liz in particular, were rubbing off on his son.

"His language? That's the least of your worries. I am so _done_ with them today!" Liz banged her head against the back of her chair.

"I should go help, I suppose." he sighed. He wanted to do that even less than he wanted to deal with possible pre-emptive countermeasure strategy. Although come to think of it, there wasn't much difference between war and raising children.

"Nah." Liz got up and went to the door, "Lemme take care of the little pests."

She marched out into the hall and bellowed so loudly that it nearly scared Lord Death into upsetting his plate.

"Shut up! We don't want to listen to your shit so settle the hell down. If I have to come in there you guys are going to be sorry sonavabitches. Go change, go back outside, go to hell...I don't care as long as you both _shut up_. This hour is dedicated to afternoon tea and some of us are trying to relax and be fucking _CIVILIZED_ in here."

It went dead silent and Liz returned to the office, slamming the door behind her. She plopped back down into her chair and held out her empty cup without hesitation.

"Hit me," she told her stunned companion, "Straight up, with a scone on the side. Extra lemon curd."

 

* * *

 

 

 

Sevres makes some pretty china, but a lot of it is truly awful. Back in the days before the French Revolution, the company was acquired by the monarchy and King Louis XV actually went around Europe selling it like Tupperware. It often had his face, or random people, or naked babies painted on it.

I imagine Lord Death's set looking like this. Only uglier. And maybe with the naked babies.

 

 

 

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's hard being the oldest, but Liz gets by with a little help from her friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Death the Kid Week 2016. The prompt was "Friends and Partners". May contain slight manga spoilers.

"Mr. Rochester is an _asshole_!"

Kid and Liz dropped their pencils, startled by Patty's sudden, angry appearance in Liz' bedroom.

"Who the hell is that?" Liz asked, gearing up, "What did he do to you?"

Kid made a disgusted little sound and erased the errant mark that Patty had caused him to make on his sketch.

"He's a character in 'Jane Eyre'." he muttered, concentrating hard on removing every trace of his error, "She and Dad finished 'A Tale of Two Cities' and he thought 'Jane Eyre' might be a nice, calming thing to read next."

"You'd think there'd be a limit to how often one guy could be wrong, but nope." Liz looked at Patty's reflection in the dressing-table mirror and then back at her own, "For real, Patty? You made me fuck up my eyeliner over some asshat in a _book_?"

"He's a two-timing jerk! Why are you putting eyeliner on anyway? It's almost nighttime." Patty settled down on the floor next to Kid and watched him add in the details of her sister's vanity chair.

Liz put makeup remover on a cotton pad ,"I have a date." she said, dabbing at her lash line.

"A date?" said a voice from the doorway. More startled mistakes were made. Kid and Liz threw down pencil and cotton pad in frustration. It was impossible to be artistic in the house some nights.

"I'm going to go draw somewhere else in a minute!" Kid threatened, scowling as he began his involved erasing process again, "What are you doing here, anyway, Dad?"

He looked a little forlornly at his half-finished sketch of Liz, "Do I need to go to work?"

"No, you're fine, Kiddo. I just wanted to remind you about our reading rule, Patty. Do you remember what it is, honey?"

"No doing book things in real life without asking first." Patty recited in a put-upon voice. Sometimes it felt like everyone was conspiring against her simple wish to have fun.

Lord Death came in and sat on Liz's blue Aubusson rug, "Which means that under no circumstances should you set fire to any of the beds, okay? Particularly not while we're in them please."

Patty had enjoyed Dickens' story about French Revolution a little too much. Living in a house designed by a couple who'd used guillotines as a decorative in-joke had only fueled her imagination. After an unfortunate incident with the tassels on the dining room curtains and Nadine's bagel slicer, Lord Death belatedly realized that he needed to make a rule about children playing with sharp objects. Or taking literature too seriously.

"'Kay." Patty agreed and leaned against his arm while Lord Death glanced over Kid's drawing.

"Nice work, Kiddo."

"It would be better if you guys would stop making me mess up. If I erase on this paper much more it's going to tear, or get smeared. It might be a little smeared now? Does that look bad to you? Maybe I should start over..."

Kid started scratching his head with his pencil . Lord Death reached past Patty and plucked it out of his hand.

"Stop that, Kiddo. The picture is just fine. You're fine. Now _stop_."

Kid took a shaky breath, struggling to get himself under control. Liz whipped around, waiting to see if she needed to jump into action but his father was already on it. He embraced his son, squeezing him tightly and patting him rhythmically. Liz favored him with a proud smile. Death had actually done some research on anxiety and between the two of them they'd developed a semi-successful system of diffusing Kid's low-level breakdowns. The big ones still involved days in bed under heavy sedation, but things had gotten a little better.

"Now, what's that you said about a date?" Lord Death asked over the top of Kid's head.

"That I have one." Liz replied saucily, "Tonight."

"With whom?"

"Trevor." she said happily, returning to her makeup.

Lord Death was outwardly calm, but inside he was wildly wondering what to do about this new development. He'd just gotten them into some semblance of order, for fuck's sake. There hadn't been a violent fight for almost two weeks and now, on his very limited ability as a single father, he was going to have to deal with _dating_? Life was not fair. He cleared his throat.

"Where, uh, did you meet him?"

"At the coffee shop." Liz' eyes narrowed.

"And does Trevor-you-met-at-a-coffee-shop know that it's a school night and that you're only fifteen years old?" Lord Death asked, not bothering to hide the suspicion in his voice.

"He's fifteen too, and what does that have to do with anything?" Liz demanded, "I've been dating since I was eleven!"

Out of respect to Lord Death she refrained from mentioning that she'd done a lot more than date.

"It means that I think you're too young to be going out at night, especially when you have to get up in the morning." he said disapprovingly.

"Oh my God. Really?" Liz turned around in her chair, "I can take care of myself. Not like I haven't done it before. _Jesus_."

"You're used to taking care of yourself with a gun," Death pointed out, "And I'm assuming you won't be taking Patty along on this date."

"Of course not!"

"Then how would defend yourself if necessary?"

"You seriously think Trevor might try to murder me in the middle of Deathbucks?"

"No, but-"

"Sis has beaten the shit out of people alone before," Patty piped in, " _Lots_ of them."

"Well, what about-"

Kid turned around in his father's arms, "Or are you worried about her virtue? Because I believe that ship has sailed."

"Are you calling me a slut? At least I don't have to consider sneaking off with the Victoria's Secret catalogue a date!" Liz threw a hairbrush at Kid, who dodged it easily. It bounced off of Lord Death, who was staring at his son in shock.

"I use it for _drawing_!" Kid protested, blushing so hard his ears turned red, "You won't model for me very often and Patty can't sit still long enough!"

"Suuuuure you do, you little perv. There are lots of half-naked people in National Geographic, too, but I don't see _that_ disappearing up to your room."

Kid tried to regain his composure by destroying his father's a little more.

"It's very archaic to feel proprietary over a woman's virginity." he told Lord Death, "It denotes a feeling of ownership and furthers society's patriarchal belief that sex devalues a woman. Which is wrong, especially when the inverse is held true for men."

"What he said!" Liz yelled, pointing at both Reapers, "Yeah, don't devalue me."

"I am not devaluing anybody!" Lord Death yelped, "Kid you stay out of this! Liz, I would hate for _anyone_ to make unwanted demands on you. Plus you know how you get when you don't sleep enough."

"Bitchy. You get bitchy." Patty supplied, in case anyone was confused. She had no idea what half the conversation was about, but watching everyone freak out sure was interesting.

Kid nodded, "Exactly!"

"Not as bitchy as you, though." Patty told him honestly, "You can be a nasty little fucker in the morning. That's what Liz says."

"You are not helping, Patty!" Liz shouted. Kid was doing a better job of arguing her case than she was. The last thing she needed was for him to get mad at her.

"So if she comes home by bedtime and promises not to have relations with Trevor could she go out?" Kid asked his father. He sounded interested in a detached, clinical sort of way.

"I-"

"Yeah, what if she promises to come home in time to not be a bitch in the morning and to kick Trevor's balls off if he tries to have sex with her?" Patty had no idea what "relations" were and thought she should clarify the whole defense.

"I can have sex if I decide to!" Liz screamed, "I can make up my own mind!"

"Yes, there's a big difference between sex and rape, Patty. I think Dad's more concerned about the rape part." Kid said solemnly.

Lord Death hadn't felt so rattled in years. If he were capable of having a stroke, he thought he'd be on the verge right about now.

"ENOUGH!" he shouted. He held up a hand and the room went silent. It wasn't often that he used his Dad Voice, but when he did they all knew they were perilously close utter destruction. Or a weekend of grounding and extra chores, anyway.

"I agree that things may have changed since the last time I went on a date and my thinking may be not be in line with current standards-"

"I'm _positive_ it isn't." Kid interrupted, "The last time you went on a date was 1791."

Lord Death scowled at him, "Be that as it may, I am simply looking after your safety and well-being, Elizabeth."

"Aw, I know that." Liz said, slumping, "I just...wanna go out like a normal person once in a while, you know? Seriously, it's just meeting someone at Deathbucks. I promise I'll come right home after. No late night, no drinking anything but coffee, no sex."

"The no drugs and alcohol agreement remains in effect , as does a curfew to prevent you being overly tired and unable to do well in school." Lord Death informed her, "But I'm not telling you that you can't have sex. I just want you to have it on your terms in an environment and relationship that are physically and emotionally safe!"

Liz looked at him, wide-eyed, "And here I thought you were being the world's oldest living prude." she said, and started to giggle uncontrollably.

"Hardly," Lord Death said loftily, "One time I-"

He broke off when Kid and Patty turned big, expectant eyes on him. He cleared his throat and tried to pretend he hadn't almost told three underage children about a four hundred year old sexcapade.

"So I can go?" Liz asked, coming over to stand before the trio on the rug.

"Yes, but home by nine." He said, trying to regain his poise.

"Thank you." Liz threw her arms around him. Kid, still leaning against his father, made a spitting sound as her long hair fell across his face.

"Well, as you said, it's just coffee." Death replied gruffly.

"No, I mean thank you for giving a shit about me." she replied, resting her head against him for a moment. One of his rare smiles lit Death's face and he kissed her forehead.

"A give a lot of shits about you. " he said, getting to his feet, "If it ever seems like I'm hard on you guys, it's because I do care."

He looked at the three of them for a long moment, "And now I'm going back to work, which is full of easy negotiations. Like nuclear disarmament."

As soon as they were alone, Liz took Kid's chin in her hands, "I can't believe you stood up for me."

He shrugged. "I didn't think it was fair to hold you to old-fashioned rules. Especially when you can take care of yourself. Besides, you stick up for me sometimes."

"Cause we're partners!" Patty cried, thinking of the time Liz and Kid had covered up for her when she'd accidentally gotten marker on the wall in the breakfast room.

Kid's eyes scooted away from Liz', "You might even say we're friends." He said cautiously. Liz planted a kiss on his forehead, making sure to get it right in the center.

"Ick! Stop that, it's germy!" he squealed, pushing her away.

Liz picked up her hairbrush and returned to her vanity. "Aren't you getting a little too old for the 'girls have cooties' routine, Mr. Victoria's Secret?"

"I told you I use it for drawing! I'll give it _back_ , okay?" Kid blushed again, and thought regretfully of the blonde model on page 23 with the long legs and the perfectly symmetrical ponytails. He hadn't thought Liz knew he had her damned catalogue. He was starting to believe she knew everything, or, as Patty claimed, had eyes in the back of her head.

Liz gave him an evil grin, "Tell you what. Since we're friends and all, I'll let you keep it." She reached over and grabbed another magazine from the edge of the dressing table.

"Here," she said, tossing it to him, "I'll throw in a copy of Cosmo, too."

Kid read the headlines and his eyes went wide in shock.

"'Best sex positions for girls'? 'Kinky sex you'll both love'? 'Orgasms guaranteed'? What IS this? And why would _I_ want to read it? Yuck."

Liz gave her lips a coat of gloss, "Trust me, you're so weird that you're gonna have to bring something extra to the table when _you_ start dating." she advised, smacking her lips together, "I'd start studying now if I was you. Just think of it as a little present from one friend to another."

He dropped the magazine like a hot potato, and Patty scooped it up to look at the article on '50 of the most embarrassing sex stories ever'.

"If it's all the same to you, I'd prefer a scone from Deathbucks." Kid said, desperately wondering how he continually managed to land himself in hot water, even when he was trying to be nice. He had just about determined that you just couldn't win with girls.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize in advance for the insanely long chapter. It feels really flawed, but I've really been wanting to touch on my headcanons for Death City, how it's set up and how it operates. It got completely away from me and honestly isn't my favorite installment. I got so burned out on KiMa Week being almost back-to-back with DTK Week that I think I strained my writing muscles :) If anyone has ideas for improving or shortening this beast, they will be most welcome! Feedback of any kind really makes my day.

Nobody had mentioned a party yet. With less than a week left until the big day, it had become obvious to Mrs. Hurst that a little prodding was necessary. Her employer and his son were masters of  polite, superficial  interaction but when it came to emotional awareness and family involvement they were less than useless.

"Liz' sweet sixteen is coming up," she said, pausing beside Death's chair with the tea pot, "How are we planning to celebrate?"

Lord Death's head shot up, "Her what?"

"Her birthday. Her _sixteenth_ birthday."

Apparently that was significant.  Problem was, Death had no idea why.  He wracked his brain for a long moment and came up empty-handed. As trying to figure out how to deal with the children usually ended for him. And why did one of their confounding issues _have_ to come up when he had Sid  and a slightly illegal expeditionary force creeping across a South American border?

He rubbed a hand over tired eyes and tried to focus. His alter ego  in the Death Room would have to take over completely for a bit. Hopefully it behaved itself. He made the necessary internal shift and bit back his annoyance. Being inconvenienced was no excuse for not minding one's manners, after all.

"I'm afraid I have to ask you to explain."

Mrs. Hurst  clucked her tongue at him, "I thought so. It's traditional to throw a special party for a girl when she turns sixteen."

"Liz isn't exactly what I'd call traditional." Lord Death thought that  was putting it lightly. He slid his saucer closer to the edge of his desk, hoping for tea.

"No, " the housekeeper agreed, "She isn't.  But that doesn't mean we shouldn't offer. So what would you like to do?"

"Tell Marilyn to plan an appropriate event?"  he hoped he didn't sound as irritated as he felt.

"This is a family celebration, not something you pawn off on your social secretary!"

She made no attempt to fill his cup, leading Lord Death to assume she was holding his caffeine hostage until he made a decision.  Damn it, she'd asked what he wanted to do.  And what he wanted to do was have Marilyn take care of it so he could drink his tea and return to quelling an insurrection. But no, he had to play guessing games with his housekeeper instead.

"Uh...then we should, um, maybe ask Liz what she wants to do?" he asked weakly. It seemed like a good response, but this could be one of those trick question situations. If he got it wrong there was every possibility he'd never get anything to drink. He felt a proud thrill when she nodded approvingly.

_Yes! Nailed it!_

 "There you go!  Why don't you go ask her about it?"

"Now?" Lord Death looked mournfully at his empty teacup.

Her voice was firm, "Yes. Before you forget. Besides, you've been sitting at that desk for about fifteen hours straight. A walk would do you good."

He got to his feet, feeling petulant and slightly tricked.  Mrs. Hurst patted his arm consolingly with her free hand.

"Now, now, I'm sure your war will be just fine without you for a while. When you get _back_ you can have a nice cup of tea. And I'll have tea sandwiches and ladyfingers ready for you, too."

Death stalked out of his office, thinking that affairs were in a sad state when a man couldn't get a hot beverage in his own house. Not to mention that he was bullied mercilessly by everyone in it. In all fairness, though, he admitted that he'd never have remembered Liz' birthday on his own.  Or anybody's birthday, for that matter. Which was _why_ he had a social secretary, for heaven's sake.

He hadn't been up to the third-floor schoolroom  for a long time. It was the domain of traditional education and he left it to the professional tutors he'd hired.  He conducted Kid's lessons on the development and use of Reaper skills in the Death Room, and Sophie had handled the practical field experience.  He'd been increasingly pushing the responsibility for his son's training off onto his puppet lately, even though he wasn't sure how effective or thorough the creature was being. Something else he needed to check up on someday when he had the time.

He paused at the schoolroom entrance, taking a moment to enjoy the intoxicating smell of books and paper, and the sight of his three hellions doing their homework at the long central table. Kid had blocked off his fastidiously arranged portion of it with two large atlases, probably to hide his view of mess Liz and Patty had created on the rest of it.  

"Tests tomorrow, huh?" Death asked, smiling at them.  The tutors gave examinations at the end of each week, and he hoped the girls never found out that it was at his behest. 

 Patty looked up from a crumpled and much-erased worksheet and scowled at him, "You aren't allowed to look happy about it. I HATE this crap!!!!"

Kid peeked over the top of his makeshift study carrel.

"Fractions." he explained.

"And Kid won't help me because he says mixed numbers make him nauseous." Patty kicked him under the table to relieve her feelings. He shrieked in pain and then demanded that she kick him in the other leg to make it even.

Liz threw her pen on the table, "I'm gonna kick _both_ of you if you don't shut up!"

Patty obediently kicked Kid in the other leg and they retreated meekly back to their work.

Lord Death pulled up a chair beside Liz, careful not to disturb the symmetry of the seating arrangement.

"Why don't you all take a break for a minute?" he suggested.

There was an indignant snort from behind the atlases.

"They haven't done anything _but_ take breaks. " Kid told his father, "Patty's been reading under her desk all day and Liz' entire English essay is comprised of the phrase 'fuck this shit" written in fancy letters."

"You little tattletale!" Liz hastily stuffed her page of decorative profanity into a folder, "Would you like to tell your daddy exactly how much time you spent organizing that little hideout you made for yourself over there?"

She didn't think he would, so she informed Lord Death that it had been forty-five minutes.  Then she dove into her English notebook and tried to pretend she was above suspicion in the goofing off department.

"It was not! It was an hour," Kid cried, "If you're going to tell on me, make sure you use a number that can be divided in half by two!"

Patty shot him an accusing glare, "I thought you said you hated fractions!"

"Two isn't a fraction, it's a whole number, you idiot!"

Kid promptly discovered that a hardbound copy of "A Little Princess" hurt like hell when it slammed into your kidneys with the full force of Patty's rage behind it. He snatched it away from her and sat on it before she could whack him a second time.

"I want to have a party!" Lord Death blurted, hoping it would distract them before blood was drawn.  

Three sets of skeptical, disbelieving eyes turned on him.

"For what?" Patty asked, temporarily ceasing her struggle to get Kid's butt off of her book.

"Liz is having a birthday next week. As I understand it, sixteen is a big one."

"You want to give me a _party? A Sweet Sixteen party_?" a perilous-looking scowl furrowed Liz' brow.

Lord Death had a feeling he was about to get another lesson on dated, patriarchal social structures and his failure to be hip. He backpedaled, silently damning his housekeeper for getting him into such a pickle.

"You don't _have_ to have a party," he assured her, frantically waving his hands, "It was just an idea! No offense meant if it's out of date or anti-feminist--"

Liz cut him off.

 "You mean a _real_ birthday party?" she asked suspiciously, "Like with a cake and stuff?"

"That's usually how these things are done...isn't it?"

Her eyes lit up hopefully and he realized that her birthday had probably never been treated as an important event. The sadness that Death kept constant company with swelled profoundly and he instantly forced it back down.  Pity hurt Liz more that sharp words ever could. And when Liz was feeling hurt, well, it usually wasn't pretty.

"Cake, balloons, anything you want." he said gaily, and her frown melted into a joyous smile, taking his heart along for the ride.

"Ohmigod, really!?"

"Haven't you ever had a birthday party before?" Kid asked, blowing the whole moment. The hardness returned to Liz' eyes, the blue going flat and dim under another frown.

"Yeah,"  she said, flippantly affecting her old tough-girl demeanor, "I had one once. When I was thirteen the dude I was crashing with gave me an eight ball and we played party games with his friends all night long."

Kid looked confused, "Why would he give you an eight ball?  That's the best one, but you need more than that to play pool with.  We have a table with a complete set of balls down in the game room if you ever want to play."

"I'll bet it's the only set of balls you have!" Liz' anger had a wildness in it that would have made Lord Death's hair stand on end if the cocaine story hadn't already done the  job. Patty abandoned her book and dashed back to the safety of her chair. Losing an argument with Kid was better than being in his vicinity if Liz decided to start throwing things at him.

"You are so dumb!" Liz shrieked, "Even for twelve you're dumb!  It was coke, moron.  And not the kind you drink, in case you're confused about that too!"

Kid didn't understand why she was so upset. Nor did he care all that much because he really needed to get back to his geography review. It was going to take a long time because the jagged, asymmetrical borders between countries were terribly hard for him to look at. If intimate knowledge of them wasn't absolutely necessary in his position, he'd have happily failed the subject.

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I didn't have a birthday party last year either." he offered, trying to make amends.

It just made Liz feel worse.

"How could a spoiled rotten brat like you not get a birthday party?" she demanded.

Kid shrugged, "The staff had one for me, but I didn't attend. Dad was awfully busy that day. I had to work and didn't get home until really late, anyway."

Liz and Patty were appalled and Lord Death shrank back into his chair.  Kid tried to look nonchalant about it; like he'd _chosen_ to launch an anti-kishin offensive in Visakhapatnam instead of celebrating his birthday.  He didn't know why Liz had to make such a big deal about everything. He'd had plenty of parties in his life, just...not for the last couple of years.

"Well, you'd better not forget my party!" Liz exclaimed, "Either one of you!"

" _I_  won't forget. I even have your present ready." Kid said, smugly remembering the four engraved bangle bracelets that were wrapped in Tiffany's signature blue paper and hiding in his bottom desk drawer. He'd taken the precaution of locking it; both of his weapons were incurable snoops.

"You bought me a present?" Liz instantly felt bad for calling him a spoiled brat. Not bad enough to stop doing it forever, but she promised herself to be nice to him for the rest of the day. Guilty feelings were instantly forgotten when Lord Death mentioned a gift list.

"A convertible would be nice." she said, grinning. She wouldn't lie and say that having a chauffeur wasn't cool as hell, but she could hardly wait to be able to drive around town on her own.

"A red one!" Patty added. Liz had taken her joyriding in a red convertible once and they'd had a great time. Stealing cars was a lot of fun, but stealing fast, fancy cars was the _best_.

Kid looked confused, "What do you want a car for? You can't drive it."

"I'm going to get a license!"

"Not until you turn seventeen." he replied.

"You get a license when you turn _sixteen_." Liz told him patronizingly. The things Kid didn't know about the real world would fill a book.  A whole shelf of books.

"Not here." he insisted.

"He's right," Lord Death put in, "I thought it would be safer to have teenagers get a provisional license at fifteen and practice for two years before driving alone."

Liz was so disappointed she had trouble containing it. She huffed, shrugged, tossed her hair, crossed her arms over her chest and desperately tried to think of additional ways to show her displeasure. Yelling was a good one.

"You start sending the students at your academy out to fight mass murderers at twelve years old! Hell, you send _us_ out to risk our lives all the time. Kid's been putting his neck on the line all by himself since he was _ten_ , for fuck's sake! How is driving a car more dangerous than _that_?"  

Kid  peeked around his atlases again, "She has a point, Father. It's rather paradoxical to put protecting us from hypothetical danger ahead of situations that carry certain risk."

"And I've seen kids driving motorcycles and scooters!" Patty added, "You can fall off those real easy."

"Oh no you don't!" Death slapped his palms on the table, "You're not all ganging up on me this time.  Sometimes rules are rules and you're just going to have to live with them. I can't go setting a bad example by letting you lot break the law. Now, we can continue to argue about something that isn't happening, or you can put your energy into telling me what kind of party you'd like."

He surprised himself by sounding so firm and fatherly. Kid, Liz and Patty were nonplussed by their standard attack crashing and burning so unexpectedly.

"I...uh...can we have a dinner party?" Liz asked hesitantly.

 _A dinner party?_   That seemed like an odd choice for a sixteen year old street urchin, but Lord Death was willing to go with it. Liz had obviously done some daydreaming about celebrating her birthday, though. Lord Death stopped damning Mrs. Hurst and decided he owed her flowers for understanding the situation and forcing him to act on it.

"A formal one?"

Maybe she wanted an excuse to dress up.  He was already picturing her excitement over choosing her first evening gown.  Something from Versace, maybe, and Chloe had some nice things this season, too. But what was he going to do if she chose something too short, or too tight or totally transparent?  He was almost relieved when she shook her head.

"No. I want to have it at the cafe. You know, where Patty and I worked? I thought we could invite Tsugumi  and Anya and Meme. And I'd like to invite Mrs. Hurst, and Celeste, and Dave and everybody else at the house.  So, you know, they can come to the party and not have to work. You have to invite Nadine, though, I'm too scared to ask her."

"What about Coffee Shop Trevor? Don't forget to invite him." Lord Death elbowed Liz' arm tauntingly.  Sometimes he really enjoyed playing dad to a teenage girl.  And it wasn't very often that he got a dig in on Liz.

"Oh my God, would you stop with that?" she dropped her head and concealed her red face behind her long hair, "You are such a freak. I'm inviting everybody I know, okay? Even Jackie and that weird bitchy friend of hers with the pink hair. If you keep on with the Trevor shit I might uninvite your ass, though."

"If you invite Nadine, don't forget to invite Mrs. Kasabian, too." Patty sounded like she was reminding her sister to do something patently obvious.

"Who's that?" Liz asked her, baffled, "One of your imaginary friends?" It wouldn't be the first time a character from one of Patty's books had been issued a formal invitation.  Elizabeth Bennet had been to dinner just last week, upsetting the number of places at the table and sending the son of the house into a frenzy that planted him in bed for the rest of the night.

"Mrs. Kasabian is in charge of the grounds," Kid piped up, "She's Nadine's wife."

Liz knocked his atlases down in order to give him the full experience of her astonishment.

"What? Nadine has a _wife_? Like a real, actual _woman_ wife?" she demanded, gaping.

Kid looked at her coldly and his golden eyes flashed dangerously.

"Why, do you disapprove?"

He sounded disgusted and disappointed with her in equal measure and Liz hastened to explain herself.

"No, not that....I mean someone married _Nadine_? This Mrs. Kashabean has got to be the bravest person, like, ever. Or totally insane."

"Kasabian." Patty corrected, "Her first name is Lusine, and she's super nice. She let me help start seeds in the greenhouse and dig a hole for a shrub. She's Armenian. And she says _nobody_ messes with the Armenians."

"I'll bet. You'd have to be a badass to deal with all that pan-throwing and knife waving." Liz sounded awed, and Kid's stomach relaxed. The possibility that a member of his family might be a filthy bigot had made him a little sick.

 _Wait. When did I start thinking of them as_ family _?_

The sudden, shocking realization stunned him so much that he nearly missed Liz' next confounding statement.

"Well, if she can handle Nadine it's too bad that they can't really be married. Legally, I mean. She's a keeper. But marriage is really only a state of mind, I guess."

"It's legal." Lord Death assured her, reaching across the table to grab the atlases before Kid could start rebuilding his study fort.  It was weird and he wished for the billionth time that his son could act normal for more than five minutes at a crack. Deprived of his blockade, Kid busied himself tidying up the rest of the table.

"Well, in some places, sure," Liz agreed, "but not in the United States."

"You're not _in_ the United States." Kid sounded like he was talking to an impaired three year old. Liz hated it when he did that and put her best snotty voice on.

"Last time I checked, Nevada was definitely in the United States, Kid."

"You're not in Nevada, either!"  Kid tapped Patty's science pages into a neat pile.

"Ummm...are you sure he shouldn't be in a regular school?" she asked Lord Death, "Or have a different tutor? I don't think the homeschooling thing is working out real good for him. He doesn't even know where he _lives_ , for God's sake."

Kid was so dumbfounded that he let two highlighters roll onto the floor unnoticed. Honestly, the things Liz didn't know about the Death City would fill a book.  A whole shelf of books.

"Death City is a sovereign principality," he said, copying Liz' earlier patronizing  tone, "A city-state. Located on land ceded to us by the US government from the state of Nevada. I am stunned by your ignorance. Maybe _you_ need a different tutor. You don't appear to have a good understanding of where _you_ live."

He grabbed her latest social studies quiz, pointed to the big, red 72 on its top and added, "Or anyplace else, for that matter."

"What's a solvering state principal?" Patty asked, wide-eyed over the fact that she apparently didn't know where she lived, either. She'd been pretty sure about the Nevada thing, too. Kid rolled his eyes heavenward and got up to search through one of the towering walnut bookshelves against the back wall. Patty immediately snatched "A Little Princess" from his chair. Hugging  it triumphantly, she went to perch on Lord Death's knee for her explanation. He was good at explaining things and always took lots of time making sure she understood them.

"It means that when you're in Death City, you're in another country." he explained, "We touch the United States, but we're not a part of it." he opened up one of the atlases he'd confiscated, "Here. This is the United States. Can you find another country that touches the US but isn't a part of it?"

 Patty scowled in concentration over the page, tracing borders with her finger.

"Umm... Canada?"

"Yep, just like Canada. Can you find me another one?"

"Mexico!"

"Perfect! Now, here's Death City, and you can see that the state of Nevada is all around us. We're like Mexico, or Canada, but smaller.  I make all the laws, and control everything that goes on inside our borders. I'm also responsible for the Death Scythes around the world and the peacekeeping forces that Death City dispatches around the world are under my command."

"'Peacekeeping' my ass." Kid muttered.  He knew where Sid and his men were and what they were doing. He'd voiced his disagreement earlier in the day during a training session and had been impatiently brushed off by the puppet in the Death Room. His actual father huffed in exasperation now and pointedly ignored him.

"So that makes you like a king!" Patty said excitedly, watching Kid climb the rolling ladder that provided access to the books on the highest shelves.  She was definitely going for a ride on that thing later and wondered why she'd never thought to do it before.

"Okay, fine. We're not in Nevada. " Liz conceded, "But of all the places in the world to steal, why would anybody pick the middle of the effing desert?"

"Hey!  I didn't steal anything!" Lord Death cried, "It was given freely. And we needed our privacy. Somewhere I could put down roots without worrying about encroaching civilization for a long time."

"They only gave it to us because they didn't want us being allied so closely with anyone else," Kid sniffed, "They did the same thing with the UN."

He hopped off the ladder and returned to the table with "Death City: A History".  He thumped it down in front of Liz, who wrinkled her nose at it.

"I'm not reading that. It looks totally boring."

 "Oh, so we _bore you_? Thanks." The reply was heavy with sarcasm and she belatedly realized that she'd insulted him, his father, and everything his family had built and accomplished.

"Well, maybe I'll read it later," she said in a conciliatory tone as she brushed the dust off the cover, "I guess I really ought to know our family history."

Apparently he wasn't the only one thinking about family these days. Kid pretended not to notice her use of the word "our" or the contrite pat on the back she gave him. He filed her guilt away, intending to use it to get out of trouble later in the day. She was sure to get mad at him again at least once before bed. In the meantime he acknowledged her remorse by suggesting that they return to planning her birthday party, and that they do it over afternoon tea.

"You guys haven't finished your homework." Lord Death reminded them, "And you have tests tomorrow."

"You do have the power to grant us a reprieve from that this week, you know." Kid answered, "Besides, we've wasted so much time already that we'd have to miss dinner to get all our work done. "

"Yeah, you don't want us to _starve_ , do you?" Patty tried to sound as pitiful as possible.

"And we don't have a lot of time to make all the arrangements," Kid added, "We need to design invitations and a cake, decide on a theme and execute it, prepare a guest list, decorate, and of course we can't ask Mr. Masters to close down the cafe for an entire evening without proper advance notice. Really, Dad, you can't leave everything till the last minute like this."

Well, there was that.

If they were going to plan this shindig by themselves, it would take some time. Besides, he was a little concerned about Kid;  maybe he _needed_ a day off.  Death was beginning to think it might be abnormal for a child his age to be so invested in international affairs. Or to be so cynical about them.  He had been working the boy rather hard lately and belatedly wondered if the stress was responsible for the increase in emotional meltdowns they'd had to deal with lately.

"You're right, Kiddo." he said, not missing the shocked look he received, "Next time we'll plan things out right, but for now we'll take some time off and give Liz a great party for her big day."

The birthday girl's arm slid around his neck and he delighted in the quick peck she gave his cheek.

"You are so awesome." she told him, while Patty turned on his knee and informed him that for _her_ birthday she wanted a pink tent out in the yard with twinkle lights, barbecued chicken and "a wedding cake".

"And how about you, Kiddo?" Lord Death asked as they headed down to their tea and Patty excitedly dragged Liz ahead out of earshot

Kid chewed his bottom lip for a moment, trying to decide whether to tell the truth or not.  Baring his feelings had become increasingly hard for him.

I...want," he hesitated, weighing his desires against his fear of disappointment.

"You can tell me," Lord Death encouraged. He put his hands Kid's shoulders and the warm, secure weight tipped the balance in honesty's favor.

"I want you to take the whole day off," Kid said quietly, "and I want beef bourguignon like Maman used to make and I want the four of us to have dinner together."

The obvious expectation of disappointment on his son's face added to Lord Death's store of permanent sadness.  Such an average little request, made with such trepidation.

"Then that's exactly what you're going to get," he promised, and was rewarded with a brief hug.

"Thanks, Dad."

Kid felt happier than he'd been in days. So happy, in fact, that he didn't even notice that the kiss his father dropped on the side of his head was completely asymmetrical.

 

 

 


End file.
